Restoration diary

Dave as seems to be the case most weekends at the moment, spent both days doing various jobs, then helped Ian & Pete stretch the stretch bolts on another three power unit big ends on a miserable Sunday when it rained continuously. I wired the auxiliary contacts on BMR1, GFR & OIR relays and the Z59 resistor on the board behind the fuse cabinet in Repulse.

Dave was on site all weekend whilst Steve & Sarah spent Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday there. Dave carried out various work on brake rigging and some bodywork both on Repulse. He also looked into preparing the traction motors for lifting from the two spare bogie sets, I think the fixing bolts are proving very tough!!!

Steve & Sarah continued identifying the cut cables in Renown. The going was very slow this weekend as the cover to the water header tank level switch would not budge so in the end with help from Dave the whole level switch assembly was removed from the tank. Once the whole assembly was removed the cover was prised away to reveal the cable connections. The two level switch cables were identified and labelled. The level switch operation was tested and found to be good and therefore the whole assembly was reinstalled.

A further 2 cables was identified at the Fire Alarm Relay No1. All the cables were retested at the AWS Relay Box to prove we had identified these.
Steve and Sarah took an hour out on Sunday to meet up with John Patrick - Peak Rail Safety Officer to complete their Personal Track Safety certification.

Dave, Chris & Tom spent a marathon five days on site. Dave sorted the spare brake rigging and began cleaning & un-sticking various parts, Tom continued working on the interior wood surrounds on the quarter-lights & drop-lights in 30's No.2 cab & Chris fitted the three remaining sections of 185mm cables to the field divert contactors, as he & I had decided a fresh pair of eyes might be able to devise a solution from pictures he had taken of the cables in 50050. He has also taken the auxiliary contacts off the 'proper' 50 reverser, to see if he can fabricate a new mechanism for the second reverser for Renown & begun cleaning debris from the No.1 end clean air compartment.

Dave spent the weekend on site clearing up the stores shed, then on Sunday helped Ian & Pete stretch 12 more stretch bolts on three big ends on the power unit, having made a new tool during the week. Having forgotten to reconnect the rad fan fuse last week (despite posting that I had completed the wheelslip board), I did so, then fitted the small relay board behind the fuse & mcb cabinet. This board has the Overload Interlock relay OIR, Generator Field relay GFR, No.1 motor blower relay BMR1 and the lighting time switch load resistor Z59. Two of the mounting bolts again required loosening slightly to fit the board in the somewhat tight space, and the resistor was removed to ease fitment. The lugs on the large cables to the GFR & BMR1 were cleaned and they were bolted on to their connections on the rear of the board, which again was time consuming due to the confined space to wield spanners.

Dave spent the weekend on site having a general tidy-up of the coach and container, then helped Ian & Pete torquing the big-end stretch bolts until the tool broke! After I had returned the wheelslip relay board to my house after the previous workparty, I removed the contact fingers from the relays and cleaned them (not the easiest of tasks as the fixing screws are tiny & probably hadn't been removed since the relays were originally made), straightened two of the contact fingers on one relay. They were re-assembled and fitted back onto the paxolin board with new brass cable connection bolts to replace to broken originals, checked for operation by dabbing a 110v DC supply onto the coil contacts and were found to be still working. The associated three 10k ohm resistors were also removed, cleaned, checked with a meter to see they were still working, and refitted. The brass rad fan fuse mounting pillars were missing, so they were taken from the spare broken board, cleaned & fitted. The mounting pillars for the plastic relay covers were removed as they were rusty, & were de-rusted, painted & refitted. The filthy relay covers were cleaned and refitted. Today, the completed board was mounted in the elec cubicle in Repulse, but required a small piece cutting off one corner as some cables that go past the board were hard against one edge, and two of the mounting bolts needed to be loosened as they didn't quite line up with the mounting holes. The board was then fitted and bolted in, the rad fan fuse was fitted & the external connections have been made.