ashes to ashes

ok tuesday morning
moment of truth
filled the tal up with water
and yes it leaked from a stay in the front top corner of the firebox so underneath the tank on the drivers side
so thats going to be a major job
think there going to do the ten year boiler exam on it at the same time as the tanks gotta be lifted and the cab taken off and the boiler lifted from the frames an all the lagging removed
so yeh not goood news
for the rest of the day me and peter attempted to remove the ash pans from the earl it took the rest of the day
firstly we had to take out the short section of rail from over the pit to give us enough space to lower the ashpans off
then we had to take off the hand brake shaft and the brake linkages on the top end
was a little tricky ended up using hammers and whatnot
then we started to undo the 6 bolts holding each ash pan on
only thing is 2 at the very front of the boxes have about 10mm of clearence on them
and they were rather seized in so after some head scratching we managed to squeese in the gas axe and warmed them up then got a bit of pipe over the spanners end to give some extra leverage
after we'd got these out we jacked the big jack up to support the weight of the pan and then with the impact gun we undid the rest of the bolts and lowered the pan
the pan was reluctant to drop tho so got a bar in and jiggled it bannnng oh bother well at least its moving down now lol
shoved a bit of channel under it before lowering fully then we slid it out from underneath
repeated for the second one and then it was time to take the the firebars out
luckily someone who had been on that last time hadnt cleared the fire out and soooooo i ended up ghost like
ash in my eyes
ash in my ears
mouth back of throat
even somehow in my socks
yay
then we put the rail back and went home
fun
nighty night need some sleep

uhoh spaghettio

so its tuesday
monday was okish spent alot of time steam cleaning outside though
ended up with wet boots and a wet arm
so had to go create a second pair of boots from the various spares in the locker room
they wernt great if im honest but at least my feet were dry
(spare socks an essential for my locker )
on monday
we lifted the bogie
and dropped the wheelsets out and then it was up onto the wagon
was very straight forward shove it up to the cranes (one at each end as the bottom end with the cylinder block in is much heavier than the other) and then lift it
and drop the wheelsets out (after taking the keep plates off prior to lifting)
then it was a case of getting the truck in to lift the bogie onto
the cranes couldnt lift the bogie high enough to push the truck underneath it straight in so we had to slew the bogie across to the left and then push the truck in and then swing the bogie back over the truck
and lower away
simples!
then i got the less glamerous job of shunting the wheelsets out with the arrrrg and the truck with the bogie on and steam clean them
did this got soaked wasnt particularly happpy lol
during this time bob pete and dylan had been changing oil and fuel filters on moel hebog ( the snt/pway other disel) then they started it up and it was leaking oil and would drive forwards but not backwards hmmmmm strange any way pete just fixed the steam pipe to the cylinder drain cocks on the ricket as it had been blowing through a hole on sunday when i fired it and then it was home time yayy

tuesday
today i spent the day working mainly on the earl
knocked the bushes out of the various arms on the valve gear cleaned it up and took apart the valve gear
had a problem with one of the pins through the die block and expansion link
had to drill out the taper pins that were holding it in and even then it wouldnt come
so a gentle persuaded and a few choice words later and it was out
then we took a look at the hedgehogs (hebogs) problems and the problem turned out to be the brake cylinder on the left hand side had eaten itself
when the brake was released the piston was not retracking back in
we took it off took it apart and cleaned it up and found that it had unscrewed itself
so we screwed it back in and it all worked beautifully
after that me and bob started to set up the parrallels to measure the frames for what needs to be machined off of the axleboxes
then we went and had a gander at the tal which had been failed on saturday with a leaking stay in the firebox and a flexible pipe that had blown
untill we've hydrauliced it we dont know where the stay has gone but its looking like wer going to have to take the tanks off to do this so it was mentioned that we might just do its ten year boiler exam and whatnot at this time
anyway im sleepy
night

the pits

ok so a little something i forgot to mention in my last post
during mine and petes mahoooosive shunt last friday
i may have found the elf hat on the cric
and i may have waited till pete couldnt see me before putting it on
and i may have popped up when pete was wavving me on
cue giggles for about 5 minutes

ok so back to the week
tuesday was a massssive day
the earls bogie went from being 90 % complete to about 30 or 40 %
pete and myself just shifted and we got off all the valve gear
the....

OK Theo's just made a careless mistake, moving away from the laptop and Dave's now taken over the blog - ohhhhhhhh yesssssssssss!! Silly boy, which Amy, Mikey, Jon, Emma, Clarkey and countless others will no doubt agree!!!

So he spent the rest of this week, in no particular order, messing around with more bogies, grafitti-ing the Funkey's knackered bogies with marker pen bets on when its gonna fail this summer after the transmission gets sent back - sometime when Dave Davies Diesel Destroyer is driving it no doubt) going to get rump steak at the Union on Wednesday nite, then he got let out on the footplate of the Tal yesterday, not before assaulting it with his head though, and was firing all the way up to Trwyn-y-Garnedd while Phil B stood around doing sod all...(well, no change there haha) - actually I better take that bit back otherwise I'll get crap rosters for the rest of 2010 lol.

Oh between us we've also christened Amy's new car 'Bruce' - George the funky multi-coloured seatbelted Citroen Saxo appears to have bit the dust, so the box on wheels that is the Ford Fusion needed a nickname. It could have been either Bruno or Bruce - they both have significance (dont they Mr High and Mr Brayne).

He's now asking to have his blog back...shall I be kind?! Answers on a postcard please... :-)

ok that was dave 'wolfy' wolstenholme guard extrondinaire
ummm so tuesday
firstly we had to disconect the excentric straps from the expansion link so that we could get enough vertical movement to get the split pins out of the pins in the valve gear
i funnily enough was underneath in the pit and disconnecting the eccentric straps kinda ended up with one dropping on me noggin
the phrase oh bother that smarts was posssibly used
then when we had released the valve gear from the briddle rod link arm (the one that attatches the bridle rod to the frames) it was time to release it from the piston valves on the back of the cylinder block
more choice words were used when i kinda hit my head on the axle of the loco
we extracted the expansion links and then the eccentric straps without too much difficulty the only thing was the bogie was at the end of the pit so i kinda had to crouch on the steps to undo the bolts from the eccentrics to the straps
then i undid the springs from underneath using the air powered impact air gun
then it was a case of lifting the springs out and washing them in the tool washer

we also stamped things L for left and R for right
but pete had kinda had a little bit of a senior moment and got his left and right mixed up soooo we had to grind the stamps off and redo them oooops

wednesday
was a continuation of tuesday with the dissassembly of the earls bogie
to start the day i steam cleaned it to get more of the crap(technical vocab) off of it
i got the bad end of the job i was outside freezing my arse off getting covered in water and steam while pete just stayed inside and washed various components and took off some of the lubrication pipes

then we had to shunt some stuff about to get the wagon to put the bogie on once we've dropped the wheelsets out
this ended up with me pete the arrrrrg degreaser rags and lighters to set fire to the points to de ice them

we also did a fitters exam on talesin which needed its 30 day it was all fine but it was good as pete showed me what to look for in each place so was a very useful experience
then we did a fitters exam on the cric the first one for wellll to be honest a while i was sent under to check the propshaft and whatnot seeing as i'd spannered on it earlier in my contract and i also had to grease all the grease points for the first time in 2 months so i got covered in grease yay

thursday
went into work at the normal time and pete and me took the valves out of the valve ports and took the bits and bobs off that were holding them in
then i went and prepped the tal as i had been informed at wedsnesday afternoon tea break that i was firing it as there was no other crew available proper scrapping the barrel lol
had a great time firing didnt have any problems and had a laugh
wolfy was the guard and despite our best efforts we didnt leave him anywhere

wolfy and me celebrated that evening with dinner in the spoon and then after showers and what not went over to beths and watched juno man i love that film
made me want a pipe but i want one that can blow bubbles hehe

friday
pete was only here in the morning so we had an easy day today
we just took the pistons out of the cylinders and washed them and took the wayshaft off
the wayshaft was a lil bugger as you've got the nuts on the back with another set of nuts and bolts completey non related at 90 degrees to the ones on the wayshaft and you can only just get the spanner on and them you have to knock him out dead straight otherwise you catch the nuts on either one of the bolt heads at the side (the ones at 90 degrees)

that took most of the morning so afterlunch with no pete around i just took the flexible lubrication pipes off and drained the axle boxes (something i did to the tal on weds also) and drained the oil pots to the axle boxes and loosend the keeps (they hold the axle boxes in the )
and took the brakes off completely blocks hangers and brake rod ( from the steam brake to the brake shoes)

then just washed a bunch of stuff we had taken off already stuff like pins, bolts, nuts, grease nipples, lubricators (which i drained and cleaned inside and out), blower ring (just went over with a wire brush) and the blast pipe

so yeh a very productive week and an enjoyable one despite getting blogjacked

au revoir

ps im nearly sorted on my canadian bank account and the lass that helped me in hsbc was rather tasty

hehe

new post new decade

happy new year
its a new decade im a little scared as next decade ill nearly be thirty and thats not cool at all
so been back at work for 4 days
and in four days loads has happened
got back in last thursday and the funky bogies were still in bits
so job list consisted of
get bogies back together
QUICK!
so got the first one back in one piece easily only needed to put the keeps and springs back in and fill up the final drive transmission boxes with oil (trojan 150 oil at that) and seal them up with some sealent compound
the other bogie required a little more work
the wheelests had been dropped out and final drive boxes taken off so it was a case of putting the gears back in putting the cases on and wazzing them up tight with a bunch of sealent round the gasket
only problem was the box round wheels as you have to put the bolts in through the holes in the wheels and the bolt heads are allan bolts
so i kept losing the tip of the key from the ratchet grrrrrr
then we (pete and yours truely) got the two wheelsets roughly the right distance apart lifted the frames up and half dragged half wheeled the sets in then lowered them down
some smacking of the axleboxes was needed as the frame didnt want to go in sweetly as its heavier at the end with the air brake cylinders
we kinda had a mess up with putting the keeps/springs on
you have to put the springs on before the keeps and we kinda found it out the hard way
so things took twice as long as it should of but the job got done
then it was time to head home and hit the shower
on the friday we filled the second set of transmission boxes with oil then had to go help the loco crew with de-icing the points in the yard
alll the points had frozen solid so pete and myself devised a cunning plan to get them points a moving
a cunning combination of degreaser rag and a lighter and a nice warm fire started the melting process
then when they still didnt move we got out the crow bars and after some persuassssion they did move
then we had a mahoosive shunt to do
literally 3/4 of all the locos we've got had to be shifted around so we could get the earl out of the engine shed into the workshops
this took pretty much the rest of the day so all we managed to get done on the friday afternoon was taking off a few parts before we would lift the loco and get the bottom end power bogie out on monday

monday morning
its freezing the heaters are broken no ones particularly happy
then we reaalise the heaters are just outa fuel so from the diseal tank we fill a bowzer drag it round the back and then me and dewie had to pump the 300 odd litres of fuel out of the bowzer
by hand
not a happy theo
but a warm one
then me and pete go salt and sand the main ramp up to the the work site as its been barely passable since the snow started
also the clearness of the day made and the snow on snowden
ahhhh man just beautiful
then it was a case of cracking on with the double fairlie
we razzed through all the normal pre lifting stuff like disconnecting the atomising steam the cylinder drain cock linkage and the flexible steam pipe and in the smoke box taking the blower ring out and the inca temple off
oh yeh and the bridle rodthen we jacked it up dragged the bogie out and steam cleaned it after putting stands under then loco as with the earl there is a large overhang as the jacking point is right by the firebox so the stands went under for saftey
ill update again tomoz my batterys dead
adios