March 2014 Engineering Report

Permanent Way
As usual the considerable amount of work completed during Autumn Outdoor Week does not feature in this report, but will be found in a separate, very complete, report by Keith Theobald. The ballasting of the relaying job on Cynfal Bank was not undertaken during the week itself, to ease access to other jobs, which would otherwise have been disrupted by ballast trains. This work became the first priority of the regular outdoor Gangs, full time and volunteer, who dropped ballast, jacked the track up, tamped it, then ramped up the existing track at both ends to ensure a smooth transition. From here the work switched to the Dolgoch area, then down to milepost 4, with jacking to level, tamping and topping up ballast to finish off the jobs at both locations. Similar work has also taken place in the vicinity of milepost 6 and this work is still ongoing at the time of writing.

The lineside fence leading up to Nant Gwernol station was never very substantial, but it had reached the point where it was no longer serving any purpose, so it was taken down and replaced properly.

The gang also found time to put up the external Christmas lights and Christmas trees at Wharf, then to take them all down again and pack the lights away safely ready for next year. They were also summoned to assist with unloading when the 2014 timetable arrived at Wharf loaded onto eight pallets in the back of a hired lorry, which had a faulty lifting tail gate and some sort of air brake problem. This froze the vehicle in the yard for several minutes whilst the driver sorted it out and explained to us that his company should not have booked his usual vehicle in for an MOT test that day. The actual job went well and the day finished with a pallet in our Transit van on its way to a distributor, the publicity store full of boxes and the last four pallets loaded onto the plant wagon, sheeted up and stored inside the north carriage shed.

Steam Locomotives
Loco No. 1, Talyllyn, passed the usual annual cold boiler inspection then was reassembled and steamed, before passing its steam test last Thursday and is now ready for use. The air pump has been stripped and checked over and is being reassembled as this report is written.

Loco No. 2, Dolgoch, also passed both cold and steam examinations and is in full running order; the opportunity is being taken for a major touch up of the dark red paintwork, restoring it to post rebuild appearance.

Loco No. 3, Sir Haydn, has spent the winter in the comfy surroundings of the Engine House at Bridgnorth and has not received any attention beyond cleaning and polishing.

Loco No. 4, Edward Thomas, ran over Christmas and has been stripped for and passed the annual cold exam. It needs new fusible plugs before the boiler is refilled and a steam test attempted. Following the injector problems mentioned in the last report, the tank has been thoroughly cleaned out, the rear access plates have been removed and new studs have been welded on to allow the refitting of the injector feed pipes onto new steel discs, designed with a threaded centre allowing stainless steel mesh strainers to be fitted inside the tank, which should keep debris out of the injectors in future. The balance pipe has always been used to drain the tank, a screwed plug being provided to facilitate this. This is a somewhat wet operation for the lucky individual whose job it is to remove the plug, so a valve and a short length of pipe has been fitted, allowing the tank to be drained by reaching in from the side, rather than climbing into the pit.

Loco No. 6, Douglas/Duncan, ran over Christmas as planned; it has been repainted in a rather attractive green “ex-works” livery for a photographic charter due to take place in March, for which it will also carry replicas of its original plates. The locomotive will be repainted into its red livery after the charter, as this is what we agreed with the organisers that we would do, but the photographs of the repaint in progress have set minds thinking about future liveries for this locomotive. Fortunately this is not a matter for the Engineering Department to decide on.
There were some signs of leakage from underneath the dome cladding, so this was removed, together with the dome cover itself, revealing that the gasket had failed, but that the joint surfaces appeared to be in good order, so a new gasket will be fitted before the charter takes place.

Loco No. 7, Tom Rolt, has been provided with a new set of tubes and expanding of these in place is proceeding well; the job is being undertaken by those attending the locomotive working parties, allowing full-time staff to work on other jobs.

For those who keep records or are just curious, the annual steam locomotive mileages for 2013 were as follows: Loco No.1, 2143; Loco No. 2, 2865; Loco No. 3, nil; Loco No. 4, 5290; Loco No. 6, 2202 & Loco No. 7, 1815. Perhaps someone knows how many road miles Loco No. 3 has fitted in during the year and can provide this data, but they are not part of this report.

Diesel Locomotives
Loco No. 5, Midlander, continues to run well and is available for use.

Loco No. 8,  Merseysider, is also running well and has seen much use during track maintenance work this winter. On Friday it managed to split the spring loaded loco road points at Wharf and derailed a wheelset, but the Outdoor Gang, who were in the process of shunting their works train with it, soon had it back on the track.

Loco No. 9, Alf, has also been running well, but the starter motor failed last week and has been removed so the electrician can attend to it.

Loco No. 10, Bryn Eglwys, is still on the Railway and in running order, but the new owners have completed the purchase, so it is not available for use.

Loco No. 11, (yet to be named), still awaits Talyllyn drawgear, but it is in use and working well. It was used to move the new gunpowder store pointwork to Wharf on the un-refurbished frames of the ex-navy bogie flat wagon no. 72, a job for which it was well suited, both it and the wagon still being fitted with MOD centre couplings.

Loco No. 12, (yet to be named), remains at Alan Keef’s workshops, but should be ready to return soon.  The wheelsets will require re-profiling at some stage, so it may be sensible to ask them to attend to this while the locomotive is partially dismantled.

Carriage and Wagon
Carriage no. 1 has seen some progress, with the new tyres bored to size and shrunk onto the wheel centres. The tyres have been in stock for some time and were rolled to our standard profile, but this has since been revised so it is intended to give the wheelsets a quick skim in the lathe to bring them up to current standards. The axleboxes can then be refitted and attention will turn to overhauling the suspension and drawgear. Carriages 7 and 23 have both been repainted and have returned to traffic, whilst their spaces in the paintshop have been taken over by locomotive No. 6 and carriage 19, both having a full repaint for very different reasons. So far this latter carriage does not appear to need much in the way of body repairs, but a broken bogie suspension spring will require replacement before the carriage sees any use. Floor planks on carriage 22’s underframe were cut to length, screwed down and painted, whilst a large number of body support brackets were drilled through and bolted to the frames, then coach-screwed to the body itself. Finally the frames were lowered down onto the shop bogies, together with the now firmly attached body, making the carriage mobile once more. The next job is to get the many panels cut to size and fit them and the carriage will begin to look like the useful vehicle it is.
Winter air brake overhauls were completed as planned, before the Christmas service began and the heaters were installed as needed. Some thought is again being given to carriage heating and the Ffestiniog Railway have been approached for advice on fitting warm air diesel fired heaters and for details of the costs involved.

The window units were properly fitted into van 70, the ex-MOD bogie van, which has returned to use on works trains, fortunately in time to keep the gang dry during the recent wet weather.

Building and Civil Engineering
Further repairs to sink drainpipes in Wharf kitchen have been needed, but the main job tackled this winter has been the tiling of the café floor using slate-effect ceramic tiles, identical to those used at Abergynolwyn. The final result looks very good indeed and should be much easier to keep clean than the old stained and damaged vinyl floor cover. Work started as soon as the café closed on January 1st, with the removal of all the furniture and fittings into a steel shipping container, purchased for the job and placed very neatly behind the water column by a skilled delivery driver. It is intended to install some air cooling into the kitchen itself as it becomes unbearably hot to work in during the summer, a result of its partially underground site.

Also at Wharf door thresholds have been replaced, some doors have been shortened to avoid them jamming, vinyl flooring on both the museum and back office staircases has been glued back in place to eradicate trip hazards and the downspout at the south west corner of the old building has been re-routed to send rainwater into a gulley, rather than running into the wrong end of the concrete trough, which runs along the platform side of the building.

A large crack in one of the new building windowsills has been investigated, the sill condemned and a replacement brought down from Pendre ready for installation. It is intended to install an extractor fan in the small Guard’s Room toilet so two access hatches have been cut into the ceiling to allow the electrician to work in this space. At Pendre the weather, or a very heavy seagull, smashed a large hole in one of the translucent roof sheets fitted into the roof of the north carriage shed. Fortunately a spare sheet was held in stock and it was possible to fit it without disturbing the main asbestos roofing sheets, but it is a reminder that the roof and cladding of this shed has already survived rather longer than its original design life and will not survive for ever.
Further up the Railway a new door was fitted to Brynglas blockpost, but this is already sticking after swelling in the rain; consideration is being given to providing some sort of porch to protect this door from bad weather in future. The café and kitchen areas at Abergynolwyn have been redecorated, a new servery counter sub-frame has been ordered to replace the old chipboard structure and the tall drinks fridge has been moved down to Wharf for use in the kitchen there. The counter and sink in the extension is to be removed and the large sliding door cupboard next to the staff kitchen entrance, which has never worked properly, is to be opened up and converted to a shelved area.

Plant and Works
The Transit van found itself back in a local garage after the power steering belt tensioner broke up, damaging the belt itself. A problem had been noticed with the central locking and the garage was asked to look at this as well, but after several days in a dry garage waiting for the replacement tensioner the locking worked perfectly and the fault has not re-occurred. The Combo van continues to run well, despite an obscure electrical fault which momentarily knocks out the dashboard display, but has no effect on the vehicle and has eluded discovery so far. It is due for an annual service and MOT test shortly, which may reveal the need for some work.
The Matisa has suffered from one or two breakdowns and a self-removing belt guard; these were quickly attended to and the machine managed to complete some useful work, but it recently became jammed whilst tamping around some oversize angled fishplates near milepost 6 and suffered some damage extracting itself. The machine is back in the workshops whilst the damage is assessed and repaired, but it is hoped to have it back in time for Outdoor Week. We have previously considered stone blowing as an alternative to tamping for routine maintenance and have spoken to other railways who are very enthusiastic about this process, so have been seeking quotes from the suppliers of a portable version of this equipment; look out for a possible appeal for funds to purchase a unit in due course.

A regular winter job is to remove the extraction duct from Wharf Café kitchen and bring it up to Pendre for thorough cleaning, before refitting it.

The workshops has completed the manufacture of the gunpowder shed pointwork mentioned in the last report which is on site and ready for installation, if preparation work proceeds far enough during February Outdoor Week. Whilst outside jobbing work has been almost abandoned as we concentrate on maintenance of the Railway, we retain the ability to do this work and an interesting job repairing a church bell has just been completed. The bell came from Llanfihangel-y-Pennant church; whilst the bronze bell was in good order it required a new hardwood mounting timber together with a lot of refurbished, or new, ironwork, all of which was made up at Pendre.

Electrical and S & T
As part of the work at Abergynolwyn already mentioned, the burglar alarm control panel has been moved out of the soon-to-be-cleared cupboard area and the public area lighting has been renewed; it is surprising to think that the modern looking lighting tracks are actually over twenty years old and now life-expired. At Pendre problems were experienced with the paint shop heating, which kept tripping out. The heaters are quite elderly and an intermittent fault in one of these was suspected, but the problem was actually traced to the outside indicator lamp, which was leaking, filling up with water and then shorting out.  A heater plug in carriage 9 became damaged, probably by an over heavy boot, at some point during the Christmas operation and had to be replaced. The south carriage shed has been available as an emergency exit from the annex area of Pendre workshops for a few years but the route has never had any sort of emergency lighting. This was put right by the installation of suitable maintained fittings.

Emergency lights were also installed in Llechfan, though these were just modern replacements for the existing fittings. Other jobs in the Wharf area have included disconnecting and reconnecting wiring to the café bar, which was taken out whilst the floor was tiled, erecting scaffolding on the back office staircase to repair failed light fittings and working on the toilet block sewage pump, which has a defective float switch. A key operated pump override switch was fitted to allow the collection chamber to be pumped out manually over Christmas, whilst parts have been obtained to replace the ailing float switch. It is intended to alter the wiring to make such replacements easier to fit in the future.

The catering department asked if sockets could be installed at the west end of the King’s public space and this was completed in time for the Christmas tree and inflatable Santa to be plugged in. A short spell of good weather allowed the floodlight high up on the south end of the public toilet block to be replaced. The new light is a low energy model and incorporates light sensitive switching so it does not light up unnecessarily. The two café counter water boilers need inspection and steam tests every year, just like our much larger steam locomotive boilers and the collection, dismantling and reassembly of these is another electrical department responsibility. This year the job was undertaken to coincide with the February visit of the boiler inspector and went well, both boilers being passed for another twelve months service.

Some work was carried out replacing a section of the main telecommunications cable in the vicinity of Cynfal Bank whilst Outdoor Week was in full swing and a small gang was available. Two of our spare Tyers key token machines, which had been loaned to the Lynton & Barnstable Railway, have been returned and are now being overhauled before being put back into stock, whilst all our own key tokens have been removed, in batches, and brought back to Pendre where they have been repainted.

The electronic key tokens have been painted in colour all over, rather than just in the centre section. This should make identification easier and quicker for all concerned.

Dave Scotson / Martin Turner