Grasshopper

As we were only shunting the yard, I was firing by hand- one lump at a time! She is fitted with a vacuum ejector, so can (and is) gainfully employed on yard pilot duties. Less so at this time of year as she isn't fitted with steam heat (yet...). She has also hauled a couple of "fund raising" trains to East Grinstead when the normal service has finished; not being designed for that sort of work does add an interesting element of "will it make it or not?"!

Here are some pictures of the locomotives I have fired this year. A particular favorite was my test day on "Baxter" (the little red engine). She was built in 1877 and the first (and only) time I fired her (so far) was on my test day. The fireman has to do all the braking as the locomotive only has a hand brake (on the firemans side) when running light engine. She is basically a standard gauge version of a narrow gauge engine, and spent her whole life at Dorking Greystone lime works at Betchworth station in Surrey. Dolgoch on the Talyllyn railway is a close relative, being from the same manufacturer and similar age. The picture with the particularly black smoke(!) was on a goods train training turn I did a couple of years ago. We took over the engine with the fire almost out, and departure time was suddenly moved forward. The fire was "cold", so produced a spectacular amount of smoke. The large green locomotive is an S15 (or "Goods Arthur") and the pictures were taken on my (successful) test day back in January.

I know that the crew on the A4 had a tough time with the drain cocks being stuck open on the first trip; they are steam operated and they weren't operating. Apparently they used 3000 Gallons of water on the first 11 miles from Sheffield Park to East Grinstead, then they discovered something had been isolated and not re-instated. Whoops! A BR Standard is easy to use, as close as it gets to having a steam locomotive with an on/off button. Add coal at station, set off, adjust fire door/dampers to maintain pressure and use injectors to maintain water level. Get to next station. Repeat. Very little need to fire on the move (on our line) if you get it right with a Standard. I spent large parts of the journey sitting down on the firemans seat (another "luxury" the Standards have. The rocking grate is another, which means you don't have to shovel the old fire out at the start of the day). The larger engines are fairly easy to use on our line, get the fire going and off you go. They're not taxed too hard at all so not so much of an issue if the pressure is a bit low. The smaller "vintage" pre-grouping (ie pre 1940s) tank engines are easier to get it wrong with; they have a very small margin to get things right. Easy to run out of steam, have too much steam or have the boiler water level too high or low with a tank engine! That's why they're more fun. Saying that, 40sq ft grate (about 10ft long) on a big engine does take some effort to fully cover (accurately) with coal when you're a rookie like me. Still aching a bit... I don't seem to have any issues firing left or right handed, in fact I seem a bit better left handed (despite being right handed) than right handed. You have to get used to both (good to practice when shovelling tons of ash out of pits as a cleaner) and on some days you can change engines so switch from one to the other.

Being a recently qualified fireman at the Bluebell railway, I got a couple of trips firing freshly overhauled ex-BR Standard 5 73802 Camelot on Sunday gone during the Giants of Steam event. She only has a couple of hundred miles on the clock from running in, so effectively in as good condition as she ever will be! Its a real privilege to be allowed to operate a machine like this, especially when the owning group have spent so much time (and money) getting her into as fine a condition as this. On my way to the railway for my 0515 sign on time (alarm set for 0400!), the fog was very, very dense and didn't clear much until around 1030am, meaning the steam really hung about making visibility even worse. The chime whistle certainly got a lot of use! Carriage load on the day was 6 bogie coaches and a 6 wheel van - 275 tons, shifted with ease even on the 1:55 gradient with a couple of slips expertly controlled by my driver. This following video (about 12 minutes in) shows us departing Horstead Keynes in dense fog, and has a lovely blast from the chime whistle- After shifting nearly a couple of tons of coal, a pint of Harveys IPA (after signing off) was most welcome!

One day we'll get around to installing the turret, launcher rails and Milans on ours. She was an early release, still in FV120 MCT guise internally and externally.

On my Matador I found it easier to pull the front axle out and drop the engine down (and out) using a pallet truck. I appreciate that the Militant axle and wheels are a fair bit heavier! That method seemed easier at the time, especially with the equipment I had to hand.

Steve, New exhaust went on last night, fuel tank is out and away being renovated; once back in we're pretty much road ready

Glad to hear you got it freed off Steve, I suppose you'll be wanting the radiator cowling at some point... I think with the engine out, it would make it easier to install the brake servo and associated brake lines. I don't see it would be any more difficult to temporarily rig some wiring to "bench test" a B60 than it is a J60 from a CVRT. If you are taking the engine out, you may also want to consider renewing the fluid flywheel seals while you can get to them. Vince

From memory (I had 2x Matadors about 12 years ago), I think there are couple of wire-gauze filters in the brake pedal valve which tend to get gunged and rusted up over time. Vince

Given the overhang on the ends and the way the body is cut over the wheels, I'd say that the body is non-original to that underframe.

That picture appears to show a BR era D.M.U in the background, so could be 1950's?

Andy, is yours called daisy because it grows in the garden?

"Looks repairable" can be deceiving, as I expect the engine would need a full strip down and NDT testing and repair due to the shock load on the propeller (as it hits the ground), and therefore crankshaft. Somebody more knowledgeable than this humble railway engineer may be able to comment further. Even a simple derailment on the railway (nowadays thankfully very rare) usually results in a wheel set renewal and resultant fitting/inspection/repair costs, so I expect those costs only increase when dealing with a flying machine. Is that the 2nd or 3rd Spitfire to come down in an unexpected manner this year?

And there was me thinking that this thread was going to bet boring...

Having just freed off my fuel tank, I can confirm that there are only the 4 mounting bolts inside the fighting compartment. I put a tyre lever between the bottom of the tank and the top of the gearbox and gave a little wiggle and it came free. Don't forget to remove the level sensor (which will not clear the rear hull during removal), the tank filler and the breather pipe on top of the tank (inside the fighting compartment). I did find that I had to remove the fuel pipes from the bottom of the tanks as they fouled things.

2 of us with a Ward LaFrance on hand- I think we'd had that (and probably other) gearboxes in and out of that particular vehicle several times by then so were quite well practiced at it! Plus I think that at that time, the decks and bulkheads did not contain the full and correct quota of bolts.

Just picked up my ex USAAF M1009; she has an 700R4 (overdrive) transmission so goes really rather well on the motorway! Nice complete example with all interior trim present and everything works. Would benefit from a repaint and a bit of cleaning inside, but she's a real credit to the previous owner who had her for 10 years and kept her in tip-top mechanical condition. The chassis is thoroughly waxoiled so no rust anywhere. My ambition is to try and maintain her in the way she has been to date. Unfortunately my garage door is 20mm too low tfor the Blazer to fit under it, so I'll be looking to get a bigger door at some point in the future!

You'll need to pop the front bulkhead out, probably drivers one as well so by that point you're not far off having the gearbox out. I think our record was one year at War & Peace we had a gearbox out (from scratch) in 45 minutes. I have no idea why we were removing it at that point, but I've changed 'boxes on at least 2 occasions at that show! Vince

I have pulled the entire clutch assembly and drum out without removing the gearbox from the vehicle, so unless you really want to remove it (ie for cleaning/painting) it is possible to access the seal in situe. I do have a vague recollection of having changed the same seal on one of our vehicles, but I've done enough work on several CVRTs over the years to have forgotten the precise details.

Just to close a thread, this vehicle has recently been sold to a fellow forum member. I wish him luck with it; when we removed it from my garage, I saw once again that it is eminently restorable, and more importantly quite complete vehicle (albeit in bits!). Realistically it wouldn't have received any attention from me for a few years yet. However, it has now been replaced with a new toy, and one which runs, drives and doesn't require restoring. Pictures to follow in due course! I do also have the luxury of another (working but not quite road ready), turreted Ferret to play with too, more on that in a new thread (eventually). Vince

I guess this is why the previous owner was running it off a 1 gallon can! The fuel pipe to the lift pump looks to be caked internally, I may just run a new set of fuel lines in flexible fuel hose as I plan to install an electric fuel pump during this work. Too many vehicles I know of have had lift pump issues, even with Viton diaphragms. I'll also do the mod to extend the fuel banjo bolts upwards slightly, thus reducing the tendency to pick up debris from the bottom of the tank. I may try something a bit caustic in the fuel tank and see what happens. If successful, I'll treat it to a Por15 treatment prior to refitting.

Yesterday I continued with the removal of our Ferret fuel tank for cleaning purposes. Due to the dubious contents of the tank, the previous owner had drilled a hole through the armour and into a side bin, where a 1 gallon fuel can was the sole vehicle fuel supply. The vehicle was never going to get very far on that! When I drained it, the initial "substance" was like black tar, but more rubbery, followed by an amount of water,then black petrol. A friend of mine commented that even a Gardener would struggle to run on that!

Thanks for posting Bernard, an interesting read. It's easy to forget all the toil and failures that go into into things like developing engines; all we (the user) see is the end product of it all, which in most cases just keeps going.

Will, it won't be an issue when its hanging off the back of a Ward LaFrance...

While the Mercedes estate in your picture may not seem old enough to be a "classic car", I remember going to school in one and that was 25 years ago!