Friday 29th August

Rob Mason was on site from around 11:00. His mission, as he chose to accept it was to sort through the battening removed from the cab of D8233 many moons ago. Armed with copies of Jason’s pictures taken at the time, he picked through the hundred or so pieces like a giant jigsaw and married them into sections ready for putting back on Saturday.

Saturday 30th August

Today saw 7 working members - Jim Gough, Rob Mason, Kris Mason, Steve Lucas, David Jenkins, Jason Lovell and David Garnett all on site, to work on a number of different jobs.

Rob Mason continued by taking the bundles of cab battening across the road to Carriage and Wagon where D8233 was currently being stored, and the slow task of returning them to their rightful place began.

Each piece was treated with preservative before new stainless steel nuts and bolts were used to keep them in place. The next stage will be returning the electrical conduit, insulation and hardboard so it will once again look like a fitted cab.

Steve Lucas and Jason Lovell started work on the air system on D8233; together they located the available pipework under the cab floor in Paddy and then paid a visit to the locomotive to test fit. This identified a number of items that needed to be replaced. It was then manufactured and test fitted, once correctly fitted it was removed and returned to the coach for returning to bare metal and priming in green primer, Jason finished the application of green paint later in the day.

Kris Mason and David Jenkins started out the day by locating, the cut off remains of he cab floor step that had been cut off when the cab was removed from the loco. This was examined to determine what could be salvaged from it. It was decided that the two angle iron frames were saveable, but the metal plate work was not.

This was cut off and removed and the angle iron frame was cleaned. A further inspection showed that the wastage at the ends of the frame were unacceptable and as the angle iron was of a size we do not stock it was put aside for repair on another day.

Jim Gough and David Garnett started checking that all the doors still worked and what remedial work was required, with delight none was found, however there are still a number of areas around the doors where the frame needs its trim repairing. Then they moved onto, identifying which frame bolts, washers and nuts were still needed. Once the numbers were identified a start was made.

Also it was noticed that the nuts holding the fan roof shield were all finger tight, Jim decided to go on the roof of the loco and spanner the bolts whilst the nuts were tightened in the cooler group. This only showed that the steel sleeves that hold the fan roof shield proud of the roof were mainly rusted away. As no suitable tubing could be found long bolts with several nuts were used to clamp the shield in place. This took considerable effort as the remains of the old sleeves had to be filed off as they were inaccessible with a grinder.

Now joined by Kris and David, the bulkhead bolts were also fitted and by late afternoon all bolts that had captivated nuts were fitted, and those that were outstanding required washers to fit to an I-Beam (for the non-technical that’s the girders that the floor is welded to and the frames are bolted to through the floor).

Some of the more difficult bolts are located at the top of the frame which required work from both outside and inside the locomotive unfortunately due to a lack of room in the cooler group it was not possible to obtain a picture,

Sunday 30th August

Jason Lovell was on site, starting the day by painting the air pipes from yesterday in white gloss.

Whilst these dried, the air system pipes for number 2 end were trail fitted to the bulkhead this included the control air reservoir, control air manifold, Pressure reducer valve and air pressure gauge. During the afternoon investigation of one of the broken pipes on the locomotive was completed and a plan for removal and replacement was looked at.

The final job was to complete the modifications required to the Turbo Air intake bellows, and that bought the weekend’s work to an end.

If you wish to lend a hand please contact Rob Mason