The Gearbox ended up its commercial working life as part of a drive mechanism to a Water Pump in North Wales. All of the Transmission Brake gear – apart from the Brake Drum was stripped off the Gearbox as that would have been surplus to those requirements, all that time ago. It appears that the Drum was not wide enough to take what we assume must have been a flat belt drive to the Pump, and a further ring was welded on to the Drum, just to make it wider and to suit that purpose. You will see from the photographs that it was a neat welding job.
In due course, that ring will have to come off again – it will have to come off before we can put the Drum in the “gap” in the Colchester Student to skim the circumference and clean up the edge as the Drum as it is too wide for the “gap” as it is.
So we have turned our attention first of all to machining up the fulcrum pins for the brake shoes. Some years ago, Steve was working in the Portsmouth area, and with the blessing of the Garage Foreman, he spent some evenings in the Bus Garage there, where the Portsmouth Thorny J Double Decker was kept at that time, just measuring up and sketching bits for our future use and reference. It is now, after all that time that the drawings and measurements are coming into their own!
These two pins are simply machined from 32mm Hex Steel Bar – reduced to 1” in diameter at each end with one end threaded 1” whit to take a securing nut.
And these two pictures show the pins in their position.