fabrication such an aggrevation

the past few days have been finishing the niggly little jobs on the moelwyn
its all together final few problems sorted
like when we tried to start it for the first time it just wouldnt go the fuel pump leaked a few hoses and stuff leaked and that was on friday evening so we just left it till monday
monday morning bright and early and theres me and bob trying to bumb start the moelwyn with the arrgg
it was interesting hurtling up and down the yard with a ww1 diseal behing my drawbar
then when that was started and ran up and down we considered the sort of missing pony truck and how to make it work
before it was too long and didnt really steer the chasis into corners so we decided to shorten it
this involved making a new crash bar to mount the pivot on as the old pivot was mounted in between the 2 driven wheels and that had resulted in the problem
so to fabricate the new crash bar all i did was cut the brackets off the old crash bar then grind them to the same height and so that the tops were both level
after this it was a case of getting a new peice of channel that was about 3 inches wide and find a point that the channel missed the wheels and the gearbox as there wasnt alot of space there
then i cut a coupld of peices of inch plate and drilled the hole for the pin in the pair and then bob welded them on
we then cut the old pony truck drawbar shorter and welded the eye back on and dropped the pin thru and bobs your uncle one uber pony truck
then today thursday we started work on our next loco
its bogies need some loving and the transmission is shagged
so today we got the loco ready for the transmission to be dropped out so we took doors off the top end of the loco and then the door frames and the the roof
all outside in the freezing wind and rain
but luckily we have a diago to help us :) altho dylan was wearing his silly hunters hat you know one with ears and all he reminded me of dan from the goofy movie lol
then we started taking bits off
i just ran around getting spanners screwdrivers sockets etc and then sorted out the various parts that were coming out of the poor vale
exhausts breathers and then me and pete made some lifting brackets to be fitted to the gearbox to lift it out
then we undid the bolts holding the gearbox onto the engine and called it aday and went home
well off to durham this weekend so ill try to write something on monday