Rostered Turns

We had our first gala appearance for the ELR!

The group would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who travelled out to support 069’s first proper venture in roughly 13 years. We hope it brought plenty of smiles and filled your lungs with goodness. YouTube and Facebook have already started filling up with footage.

I’ve been told the sales stand did fantastic and sold lots of 069 merchandise, all of which goes straight back into the money pot.

We didn’t offer a lot of mileage, but we did manage to get out onto the railway for three days and complete a smidge over 40 trouble-free miles (once we got out of Baron Street). We did fail on shed before the Beerex, but thankfully two of the gala team members were still around Baron Street, so we were able to find some material to temporarily fix the issue and join the party back at Bury.

Although we successfully assisted 20303 on Thursday and managed a blast up to Ramsbottom on Friday solo, the real test was attempting to pull roughly 420 tonnes up the Broadfield section. We knew full well that a little eight-cylinder, 1,000hp machine wasn’t capable of doing it alone and would need assistance at some point, so we asked the Class 58 driver to hold back until he noticed the speed rapidly dropping before giving us a shove. More importantly it was more about testing the machine’s capabilities to see whether all the hard work, blood, sweat and tears had finally paid off. If anything was going to happen, it would have happened at that point. I think it’s safe to say we now have a machine that’s ready to run.

That said, we do have a few issues that need attending to straight away. We’ve identified a small air leak in the engine room that leads into the floor. The section of pipe will need replacing before the loco goes out again, as it places an unnecessary load on the compressor, which has to work harder than it should to maintain pressure.

We also plan on working our way through the whole air system, starting with the strainers. We need to identify whether the strainers still have their filters fitted, as these should catch the debris in the system. At the moment, we seem to be finding small deposits in places they shouldn’t be reaching. Thankfully, most of the equipment underneath is easily accessible and fairly straightforward to strip and clean, but it shouldn’t need doing twice within two months, so some further investigation is required.

19th July

Work continues on the loco, we're slowly working our way through the air system ensuring no leaks or pipe work issues are present. With only the 1 working compressor, the less stress and extra work the compressor has to work the better.

Currently the priority is focusing on the other loco as we're 3/4 of the way through a power unit overhaul but a working day was planned to give the 20 some attention. 

The plan of action was to go through the strainers that are located underneath the loco connected to various different sized pipes, these are designed to catch any debris that runs through the pipeline to save them getting caught up in vital equipment. We’ve reported previously that we’ve had debris travelling into places where they shouldn’t be and we’ve had to strip them down to clean them for the loco to work as intended. Elliot worked his way through the system removing 2 strainers so far, stripped down, a thorough clean and refitted within a few hours.

Ben focused on treating the external surface rust around the loco before removing the discs from both ends of the loco, these will be getting bead blasted and primered ready for painting yellow. 

2 overhauled straight air valves were also installed.

Cab was given a vacuum and the windows a clean.

When we arrived on shed in the evening after the beerex we discovered a leaking pipe at the side of the generator that we don’t recall being there when we last checked, we did notice a very slow pressure drop on the loco whilst at the side of bury south waiting for the class 58 to bring the beerex into the platform but it wasn’t much of a concern as the compressor was able to maintain the pressure perfectly fine. When we got back on shed we could hear the air leak whilst the power unit was running, to hear a hiss with the unit running it would have to be a severe leak.

One of the pipes that goes through the floor had corroded, with the corrosion attacking the pipe over the years it eventually made the walls very thin and finally gave way, you could move the pipe with your hands and see the fitting ready to pop off.

Shane focused on that on Friday and had the floor out with new fittings ready to be installed today so everything was piped back up. Given the condition of the floor and a few fittings looking not far off the same state as the one that blown we decided to chop the floor and replace all 3.

After all of this was done we used the 08 to charge the air system on the 20 so we could listen for any leaks on the system and action it there and then without having the need to shut the 20 down and faff around, we can just isolate the pipes between the 08 and the 20 and crack on as needed.

The air system was fairly tight except a few union fittings that didn’t take much to tighten, we then set the pressure of the straight air valves and immaturely gave the horns a quick blast (as you do).