wow its been ages

so its been ages since i blogged
so here goes
last week was hectic
we finished rebushing merdin and got it in steam and its steaming like a wiii-atch its going incredibly well
then it was all hands to the decks to finish off the 4 isle of man bogies
this saw most of the works staff putting in the overtime on thursday and friday
and even saw myself doing riveting
which is a pretty hot job as the rivet is heated up till its glowing whitey yellow then inserted into the holes in the plates that you are riveting together
then with two air riveters you hammer the ends of the still red hot rivet over and then there you go you have riveted it together yay
others jobs i did included turning bolt heads down so they were thinner on the little lathe
it was my first time on the lathe and with the thick end of 40 bolts to do i got a bit of practice
my tution was sort of theo this is the lathe
pull this lever it starts
pull this one it stops
this handle moves it in one axis this in another
take 152 thou of an inch off each head
why aren't you doing it
and so i can sort of use a lathe
i did alot of grinding on them too
on friday morning (deadline day for the bogies) we had one bogie 3/4's complete and 3 no where near and as it had taken us 3 days to get to this stage with one so the odds were against us
but we stormed through them with the last one ending up being put together pretty much by me hugh and emma untill we got to the point where we needed diago (the jcb) to continue at which point dylan and bob took over
so by 5 pm on friday 4 IOM bogies were complete and 1 was on its way to be weighed
job done tools down off to the pub

so the monday morning after the friday before and we walked into 4 road of the erecting shop and we beheld a mighty mess
so pretty much up untill lunch me marik and richard ( THE MEERKAT)
cleared up
then after lunch me dylan and martin cleared up outside with diago
so the workshops are ridiculously tidy now ready for the next big push which is getting the moelwyn running again and linda back on her wheels

t