Archived News From 2025

 

September 2025

Bending up the brackets for the driver's seat. The originals had been cut off at Barry. Presumably
by someone that wanted a seat as a souvenir or for a spare for another engine. We made a
simple jig on our machine block to ensure all the leg lengths were the same.

 

The finished 'top hat' bracket prior to cutting the feet to length and drilling the fixing holes.

 

Trial fitted to the cab side ready for riveting.

 

We borrowed a pair of seat pivot brackets from 45293 to mark out the fixing holes and to
make a drawing so we could make our own.

 

With all the parts fabricated they have now been riveted to the cab side. They are the angles
in front of and behind the cab windows, the brackets for the driver's seat, the channel for
the floor boards, the plate that the driver's side injector water handle attaches to and the plates
that the cylinder drain cock lever attaches to. There are two more angles to fit that attach to
the platework around the reverser stand but they were made and are attached to the engine
which is now in Bury. We hope to recover these in the next couple of weeks so we can
finish the job off.

 

The outside of the driver's side of the cab with most of the rivets now fitted. Once all the parts
are riveted on they will be shotblasted and have a couple of coats of primer ready to be sent
flat packed to Bury for fitting to the engine.

 

With the driver's side complete as far as we can go at the moment we started work on the
fireman's side with the window beading, centre stiffening plate and bottom fixing angle now
riveted on. There is still quite a bit of work to do on this side yet.

 

February 2025

A complete set of spring straps for the tender, most of which are new, the four in the top
middle that look a bit rusty are originals.

 

The next challenge is to remove the brake shaft, all the bearing blocks are badly rusted and
proving difficult to separate.

 

The bolts for the brake shaft end bearing have all been removed we now just have to separate
the bearing housing from the shaft and frames.

 

All the tender steps have now been removed as can be seen here by the space where the
right rear steps were mounted.

 

One of the rear steps after removal, this one doesn't look in too bad condition but we
are making a complete new set, this one can go into store as a spare.

 

Although work is now focused on the tender we still have work to do on parts for the engine in
particular the cab. Here we are machining one of the bottom cab window runners. This shows
the bolting holes being drilled for bolting it to the cab side.