As the weather forecast wasn’t that promising, the team got off to an early start. Paul Nowland fitted up both the brakestands with the overhauled valves. While in this area, Tony fitted the new driver's side sub floor ably assisted by Paul. This is a two man job with Tony inserting the bolts on the top side and Paul tightening up the nuts on the bottom side, or was it the other way round?
Graeme Kidgell continued with the drivers side injector feed pipe system, working through to the steam starting valve adjacent to the outer firebox wrapper. The last pipe that joins the steam manifold to the injector starting valve was trial fitted and to no surprise, wasn’t even close. After a few goes at heating the pipe with the oxy it was decided that it would be replaced and in actual fact the pipe was found to be suffering from fatigue cracks. For safety reasons both the drivers and fireman’s side pipes will be replaced with new.
Just before lunch the team moved onto the final adjustment of the leading pivot and the new 3 ½ inch AF socket, and inch drive ratchet made this labour intensive job slightly easier. Well only just. The adjusting nuts were backed off and re-set. The next task will be to fit the pivot locking plate with four off 1 1/8” BSW nuts.
While the crew stopped for lunch the rain started coming down and a couple of morning showers soon turned into constant deluge. At 14:00 hours it was decide to call it a day and go home to a hot cup of tea.
Alan Gardner
