Oh the joys of steam...

MTA · Oh the joys of steam...

Today I was rostered as fireman on PB (short for Polar Bear, in case you were wondering) at Amberley.

Lit up as per usual, then at about 9am it was time to test the injectors. I tried the fireman's side one and shooosh the seals went on the clack valve! The clacks on PB for some reason have a dummy pipe, and the seal had gone on this so water and steam were being dumped out of this pipe.

The rules say that steam engines must have at least two means of putting water into the boiler, so we had to fail her.

So we still had a steam engine running, we shovelled the fire from PB into Cloister and added wood to get her going. As a result of doing this I now have a very nice burn on my left hand where it met the top of the firehole door Embarassed

Once Cloister was away, my driver and myself set about putting water into PB's boiler to cool her down and counteract the effect of us opening up the steam tap on the boiler to drain the pressure.

An hour or so later (after a very nice breakfast) we took the clack to bits and sure enough the gasket had gone.

I'd never made a gasket before, so after four attempts a gasket was finally complete. It would have helped if we had a smaller hammer but we are an NG railway!

Everything was bolted back on, including a backing shim to the gasket, and we raised steam again. An hour later and we tested her, at last we had a serviceable loco! It was three o'clock by then so it wasn't worth the hassle of getting the train out and running two trains.

So I did some shunting with PB on our industrial line by the pottery to get some flat wagons up to our workshops.

A few more goes up and down and the test declared satisfactory on the new gasket time to chuck the fire out for the second time that day!

Oh well, better than going back and forth all day...

Spokesmann

Some you win some you loose, all good experience though.

Mamod Collector

Did you take any photos of the day Simon Very Happy

MTA

No, Mike.

When I am getting on with something that needs to be done quickly there is no time for photos...