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