Furness Railway Trust blog

Just a short update this week. Projects continue to tick along but still with some way to go to the finishing line for any of them!

John Dixon has continued his quest to up-rate the quality of the vacuum system fixing brackets on FR 20, having now remade all of them from scratch from steel off-cuts. They are now in the process of being painted.

Tim has concentrated his time this week painting FR 20’s tender, which is now rapidly changing colour.

Alan has continued the task of  preparing FR 20’s boiler for a hydraulic test and is seen here removing the brass safety valve casting from the top of the dome.

Ade has been working on Caliban‘s axleboxes and there has been further progress on Fluff.

Keith has been welding up the new pipe which stretches from Wootton Hall‘s four cone ejector to the smokebox and he has also been preparing the new screw reverse baseplate for welding by Ian Massey.

Finally, the proof copy of The Iron Horse magazine has now been read and corrected so the magazines will probably be with us later this week for posting out to members.

Plenty of photographs this week as our working members get to grips with a variety of projects.

Work on FR 20 continued with Alan spending time preparing joints for the boiler blanks. Beneath FR 20’s tender, Roger and Phil Bell (seen here) have been cleaning and painting the underside of the frames and tank.

John Dixon has decided to upgrade the brackets which support the vacuum pipe which runs below the engine and the tender. This was put together rather hastily at the beginning of 1999 and is now being brought up to a standard befitting of such a venerable locomotive. John is seen here at work tidying a piece of steel  with a file….

…. before bending it into shape with the aid of some heat.

John Davis has been cleaning up the journals on Fluff‘s wheelsets with the aid of some emery cloth.

Fred has been studiously painting Fluff‘s lubrication oil boxes.

Paul and Martin from the Ribble Rail staff helpfully arranged to shunt FR 20’s boiler out of the heated part of the FRT shed on Friday which allowed Caliban‘s wheels to be hand shunted into position in front of the frames. Caliban‘s own boiler on a lowmac was then positioned in front of the wheels so that work on it can commence when resources permit.

The newly purchased hydraulic table lift was unpacked and, for once, needed little assembly before being tested in readiness for future use.

There were productive working parties over at Embsay on Thursday and Saturday. Keith, Fred and George attended on Thursday, dismantling and cleaning the areas that the boiler surveyor needed to access. Keith and Fred returned on Saturday to be joined by Mike and Ed.

Keith removed both valve covers in order to assess the play in the valves.

Ed concentrated on cleaning the cab area.

Fred polished up the brightwork.

Mike gave the coupling rods a good clean.

The boiler surveyor conducted a formal 14 month examination of the boiler today and passed it fit for further use subject to an NDT examination of the bottom of the firebox tubeplate. Arrangements will be made for this to take place as soon as possible. In the meantime, thanks to all those of you who braved the January weather to prepare 5643 for the survey.

A short update to let you know that the working members have still been hard at work this week.

FR 20’s brake gear has been re-assembled after the long job of cleaning off old paintwork and re-painting – and, of course, remembering how it all fitted together! It seems that there was a little difficulty in getting the final split pins to fit with the suspicion being that the latest layer of paint is thicker than the previous layer. However, with the assistance of clamps, the job was finally achieved.

John Dixon has finished his work in modifying the rear drawgear on FR 20’s tender and, now that the brake gear is also in place, this will enable the painting of the outside of the tender to take place. Tim got out the masking tape and made a start with the painting on Friday afternoon.

Alan has been busy cutting out jointing material for the boiler blanks which, when fitted, will enable the hydraulic test to take place. However, before this can happen, the boiler itself needs to be moved to an area where it can be accessed by a lifting device to enable the dome to be re-fitted. The first shunt move to enable this to happened took place on Thursday morning. It is to be hoped that the next moves, which will also involve the movement of Caliban‘s wheels to the front of the frames, will take place in the not too distant future.

Work has continued to paint Fluff, with John Davis wielding the trusty brush.

With various smaller lifting tasks due to take place as projects progress, a 500kg lifting table has been purchased and is due to arrived this next week. It will be interesting to find out just how much assembly will be involved and just how soon we will have to resort to the instructions!

We have been joined over the last couple of weeks by artist Gavin Redshaw, who is preparing some drawings to be put on show in the Harris Institute. Fred is seen watching over Gavin as he sketches Caliban‘s wheels, whilst we can give you a preview of the previous week’s sketch of Caliban‘s frames on blocks.

Over in the main RSR workshop, the FRT’s former RMB has been lifted for maintenance.

A reminder that there will be working parties will take place at Embsay this next week on Thursday, 16th and Saturday, 18th January. Keith, Fred and George will be present on Thursday and Keith would be grateful for any further assistance that can be offered on either day.

A Happy New Year to all readers of the blog. We hope that you enjoyed the Christmas festivities and avoided the seasonal coughs, colds and ‘flu that are around at the moment.

We are pleased to be able to report that some of our members soon put such seasonal distractions to one side and turned out for the working parties over the Christmas period, so well done to them.

Christmas Day itself brought a surprise to those of you who watched Call the Midwife for there was an unexpected fleeting cameo appearance by 5643, allegedly hauling a train from London to Scotland!

Most of us who own cars do occasionally take some time to clean out the boot, and Adrian managed to get a photo of a John Dixon applying the vacuum cleaner to FR 20’s own ‘boot’ in readiness for the New Year – just don’t tell Jean!

Keith has been continuing his work on Wootton Hall and is seen here making the sparks fly.

Meanwhile Fred has been giving attention to one of FR 20’s couplings.

In between finishing the painting of FR 20’s tender brake gear, Phil Bell has been drilling more holes in Fluff‘s running board.

John Davis is seen polishing up one of Fluff‘s lubrication boxes.

Live Steam provided a marathon performance on New Year’s Eve at the Engine Inn at Cark, finally finishing at 00.37 for a much needed rest.

Finally, we had the sad task on the 2nd January of saying farewell to Howard Fletcher. It says much for Howard’s popularity that there was standing room only at Ingol Methodist Church as over one hundred friends and members of his family gathered together for the occasion.

A quick update in what will be the last blog this year.

Firstly, Howard Fletcher’s funeral will take place at 11.00am at Ingol Methodist church on Thursday, 2nd January. It is understood that the wake will be held afterwards at the Ribble Steam Railway.

There has been a continued push to complete the overhaul of FR 20. John Dixon has carried on with his modification to the tender draw gear.

John Davis has been cleaning up more of the tender brake gear.

Even the brake blocks are receiving a coat of paint, from Paul Balshaw.

Phil Bell has been doing more painting under the tender.

Fred has cleaned and painted the engine’s dome.

Alan has re-fitted the washout plugs in the boiler now that Andy Booth has inserted two new patch screws.

Meanwhile, Keith has taken on board the work that Howard was doing to Fluff‘s axleboxes before his untimely death.

There is some good news in that the recently purchased CNC lathe, to which the FRT subscribed, has been successfully commissioned and programmed to produced some stay nuts and boiler stays for Walkden. This has been achieved with the assistance of a couple of people from UCLAN. A Colchester lathe has also been purchased and is seen here being inspected by Alan. The cost is being shared with the Ribble Steam Railway and it will replace the lathe previously used by Bill Norcross. Bill has now retired from the workshop and we wish him the very best for the future.

Looking forward, working parties over the Christmas period will take place on Friday, 27th and Saturday, 28th December. These will be followed by working parties on Friday, 3rd and Saturday, 4th January.

Finally, a reminder that Live Steam will be performing their last gig of the year at the Engine Inn at Cark-in-Cartmel on New Year’s Eve.

Before we finish, we would like to wish all our readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

We are sorry to have to start this week’s blog with the very sad news that Howard Fletcher, one of our regular working members at Preston, passed away last night. Howard had been taken into hospital last week with a bad nose bleed and was diagnosed with blood pressure issues following which he suffered a stroke. We will publish any more details that we receive in future blogs but, in the meantime, we send our condolences to Howard’s family.

Howard had joined the FRT in recent years from the main RSR workshop and  quickly settled in to become part of the FRT team. He was happy to use his engineering background take on those many fiddly jobs and spent much of his time working on Caliban and Fluff.  We will very much miss him.

Just a short update on work at Preston this week.

Phil Bell is still ensconced with painting the brake gear for FR 20’s tender.

After 21 years, the underside of the lid for the locker at the rear of FR 20’s tender has finally been painted. Tim decided to line it out as a test piece for painting the rest of the tender.

John Davis has again been painting the underside of Fluff‘s frames.

Keith has been preparing and test fitting some pipework to Wootton Hall‘s cab.

The annual FRT Christmas dinner took place at The Hungry Horse restaurant at Lea Gate last Friday and was enjoyed by 22 members and guests. Thanks as ever to Alison for making the arrangements and for reminding us all as to what we had ordered!

Work has continued on FRT projects at Preston despite the call on labour to assist with the RSR’s Santa Specials.

John Dixon has continued with repairs to the drawgear on FR 20’s tender.

Tim has been preparing the tender for painting whilst Phil Bell has been busy painting more of the tender brake assembly.

There has been more work on Fluff with Paul Balshaw and John Davis painting the running boards and John Dixon making a small alteration to the steelwork.

David Rimmer has been adding some more paint to the frames.

Keith Brewer has received the new floor supports for Wootton Hall‘s tender back from the forge after amendment and, after fitting them, has been applying some paint.

With the Santa Specials in full swing, Jen, Alison and John Davis have been in festive mood and in charge of FRT sales over the last weekend.

But… Someone apparently not in festive mood was Sunday’s steam driver, Ade!

 

A short update this time, just to let you all know that work is still progressing on all fronts, although with little massively new to report.

Tim has been rubbing down the weatherboard on FR 20’s tender, although the sudden news that the overhead wires on the West Coast main line had come down last Wednesday caused him to down tools and jump into Alison’s car for a lift to Carnforth – and what a good move that was with services only recovering the following morning! Work also continued on cleaning and painting the tender brake gear. John Dixon has worked further on his modification to the rear tender drawhook arrangement and is seen here busy with his angle grinder.

More paint has gone on Fluff and John Davis is seen bolting down the running boards.

Finally, with the Ribble Steam Railway’s Santa Specials operating on Saturday and Sunday, Tim and Alan were busy entertaining the passengers on board the trains whilst Alison, Jen and Jim were busy staffing the FRT sales stand. Jim is seen along with Derek, who made an appearance on Saturday.

 

Phil Bell has now taken on the task of removing the left-hand brake gear from FR 20’s tender and Roger is seen here lending a hand to remove one of the stubborn brake hanger pins.

This will enable some more of the tender chassis as well as the brake gear to be cleaned and repainted. Fred immediately went into action to clean off one of the brake rods.

John Dixon has now turned his attention to repairing and modifying the rear draw hook on the tender. Whilst the tender does have an access hole to the pin that holds the brake gear to the draw spring, it wasn’t sufficiently large to enable a stubborn split pin to be removed in such a confined space. So John has now created a large access hole in the bottom of the rear tender locker and as a result the draw hook has now been removed.

Meanwhile Alan managed to locate most of the blanking plates for FR 20’s boiler ready for fitting prior to the hydraulic test.

John Davis has been painting some more of Fluff‘s components.

Adrian was busy shunting coaches last Wednesday ready for the Santa Specials which start this weekend so was unable to progress with Caliban‘s overhaul. Keith and Fred have been back to Embsay once again to attend to 5643 after its washout and the loco was test steamed yesterday.  Thanks to the Embsay Loco Department Facebook page for this atmospheric image:

Cumbria was in charge of the first of the Santa Specials there yesterday, and Embsay posted this video leaving Bolton Abbey.

Back at Preston Keith has been fabricating new covers for the lubrication valves which are situated on the side of Wootton Hall‘s smokebox. Having successfully made the left-hand one (above) he then spent Sunday progressing the bigger one for the right hand side.

Also on Sunday Neil brought his daughter Caitlin for her first volunteering visit, and what better way to start her career than under FR 20’s tender cleaning off the muck while the brake gear is out of the way?!This baptism didn’t seem to put her off: she says she wants to come back and do more!

Finally, after their practice last Monday, Live Steam were in action for three gigs at the Ulverston Dickensian Festival over the weekend and are seen in action as they perform the Festival Finale yesterday evening. They have already been invited back to perform at all three venues next year!

 

Fluff‘s makeover continues to progress at a steady pace. Phil Bell and John Davis have been drilling the new plate for the running board.

John then went on to give the plate a couple of coats of paint.

Meanwhile David Rimmer has been painting the wheels.

One of the many tweaks that are being applied to FR 20 during its overhaul has been the addition of more dummy rivet heads by John Dixon. Horror of horrors, it had been noted by the rivet counter amongst us that one side of the tender possessed a few more rivets than the other!!! We can now all breathe easy now that this error has been rectified, even though it took 20 years to spot the error! John is seen tidying up the rivet heads after welding them into place.

Tim has been on top of the tender to apply a coat of red oxide and Ed Tatham has been cleaning up the nuts that secure the tender tank on to the frames.

Phil and Roger spent Friday starting the process of re-fitting the right hand tender brake gear after it had been cleaned and painted. The left hand brake gear had been deliberately left in place in order to act as a guide for the re-fitting process. Turned out to be a wise move!

Fred spent last Friday cleaning up Wootton Hall‘s tender filler top after a new section of ring had been welded into place.

The recently acquired firehole door mechanism for Wootton Hall has now been cleaned, painted and fitted.

Keith is seen here putting a spot more paint on Wootton Hall‘s tender top.

Adrian has been making some more progress with Caliban and Keith and Fred have again been over to Embsay to complete the washout of 5643.

With the Ulverston Dickensian Festival coming up next weekend, Live Steam have been practicing in earnest this afternoon around a plate of mince pies. They will be performing at the Old Friends pub on Saturday evening and then at Abbeyfield House after lunch on Sunday. Finally they will bring down the curtain on the festival on the outdoor Theatre Street stage late on Sunday afternoon. Let’s hope that the weather stays fine.

Tomorrow will see the Trustees meet at Over Kellett where there will no doubt be another pile of food to tackle before they are allowed to go home. However, there might well be the odd left over pieces of cake for Ade on Wednesday!