Attendance 2:

After yesterdays work on D5705, today it was back onto the 15. Adam and Jason continued on with refitting the electrical conduits in the engine room. The first job was to carry out some rewiring as a wiring loom for the lighting in the cooler group had utilised one of the holes that the electrical conduits went through. Once a new route was found for the wiring it was rerouted and everything reconnected up and tested, it all worked fine.

Moving on to the conduits, Adam and Jason laid out the pipes in the places that they felt they needed to go then starting off with the bottom conduit some string was thread through (to allow cables to be pulled through at a later date) and then the pipes were connected together and fed through the holes in the cooler group bulkhead and connected up to a conduit in the generator bulkhead. There appeared to be a problem in that the conduit didn't seem to go all the way through the cooler group as it should do. There was a lot of head scratching and discussions about why it didn't appear correct. After a while it was decided to start on the smaller conduit that sits above the bottom larger conduit. The same process of feeding some string through and then connecting the pipes together was followed and the pipes thread through the cooler group bulkhead. However the same problem was encountered and more head scratching and discussions took place. It was then decided to stop for some lunch and take a look at photo's that were taken when the engine compartment was dismantled a few years back.

During lunch break Jason got out his Laptop which contains his photo archive of the restoration of D8233 and began to study pictures of the conduits as they originally appeared before they were stripped out in early 2006, the photos were not as detailed as he would have liked but they did show a few things of interest most notably how the L/H side conduits exited the cooler group bulkhead into the nose end compartment, with this new information Jason had renewed enthusiasm to get the conduits installed, but after lunch break Alan Lee rang and requested assistance with the 14, it was also about this time that Phil Cribbin turned up again, and both him and Adam went over to Buckley wells to assist Alan while Jason returned to D8233.

After the frustrations of the morning session Jason was determined to make some progress on the conduits and he began in the cooler group and nose end, the reference photos had shown a L shaped conduit that attached to the smaller upper conduit via a coupler collar that was underneath the radiator, the L shaped conduit just so happened to be lying around loose on the floor of the Cooler group so Jason was able to insert into the hole and thread it onto the upper conduit using a coupler collar, he then set about pulling the threading wire through the L shaped conduit and the conduit that passes through the cooler group, once that was done he married up the next section of conduit and using the string pulled the threading wire through the long section of the pipe to the next join just inside the genny compartment, Jason then screwed up the next two pipe section with a coupler collar, it was then just a simple task of threading the wire through the last conduit section into the buzz bar box and butt up the conduits and run the coupler collar down and secure it with the back nut, unfortunately the pipe was too tight to turn by hand so Jason had to nip up to Buckley wells to Borrow a pair of adjustable grips from Alan only to find the class 14 running with exhaust gasses coming out of the engine compartment, the diagnoses being that one of the exhaust bellows had split and would need to be changed, Alan asked someone to go down to Paddy and get the new spare set of Bellows, Jason & Adam both went down and entered paddy and soon found the parts they needed, Adam returned to the 14 while Jason went back to the 15 and with the borrowed grips managed to do up the coupler and the first of the 4 main conduits was now fully installed.

Now that Jason had a better understanding of how the conduits went together the he moved on to the next pair of conduits on the R/H side of the loco, these had only been partly assembled from the last time That Jason and Adam had worked on the 15 together, the issue they had encountered that time was that the cooler group conduits came up short, since then Jason had sourced a pair of short conduit extension pieces and fitted them into the cooler group, he had also loosened off the clamping bracket under the R/H radiator, Jason decided to start with the thinner lower conduit and began linking the sections together and threading the wire through and soon it was all done, the next challenge would be to fit the larger upper conduit, the problem with this was there is a short section at the front of the engine compartment that attaches to the threaded ends that stick out of the back of the cooler group, there are two T section conduit joiner on this section, one at each end, and because of these two cannot twist the pipe around to thread it onto another section as the tops of the T section foul the conduit below, so in order to thread on the cooler group section Jason had to delve into the depths of the cooler group once again and lie down over the TMB ducting and manoeuvre his arms around the oil pipes to get at a coupler collar that was on the other end of the short conduit section just under the radiator frame, it was a difficult task for Jason to get access to coupler but one it was undone he could then go back into the engine compartment and thread the short conduit piece into the T section joiner, then it was back to lying prone in the cooler group to connect the conduit back up again, with that done it was then just a simple matter of connecting up the remaining conduit section and threading the wire through, on the last coupler Jason was unable to do up the securing back nut due to the grips he had not opening wide enough to fit so that would be a quick fix for next time when He had better tools for the job.

y this time it had gone 4 o'clock and Jason was pretty much beat, 3 out of the 4 conduits were now fully installed and the large L/H conduit that Jason & Adam had struggled with earlier in the day would have to be sorted out another time, Jason tidied up the tools and called it a day.

The next working weekend is August 25/26 - If you wish to lend a hand please contact Chris Tatton