Scraping Through....

Activity on CR828 in the last few days has included a lot of scraping of white metal (thanks Nathan Lightowler and Benny McInnes) ; removal of brake rigging from the tender (thanks Dave Green); blanking off of the boiler safety valves (thanks again Dave Green) and some reflection on the process of white metalling the eccentric straps (thanks to Alan French). The front buffers have been removed to allow renewal of the wooden packing plates that lie beneath them. The C&W Dept is helping with the production of the new plates.

Further afield Harco Engineering have set up the new LH Hornblock casting on their appropriately sized milling / boring machine. They will turn the job round pretty quickly and we should have the component back at Aviemore in a week or so. Then we'll have the fun of fitting it to the frames..!

The new LH Hornblock casting on the table at Harco Engineering. On our machine at Aviemore it looked huge; here it looks a bit diminished...

The wonders of CNC machining.....! Punch in the code and go and have a cup of tea....??

Front buffers removed to allow renewal of wooden packing plates (one of the old ones is on the front buffer beam). But why did the Caley fit packing plates..? Because the dimensions of couplings were altered after 828 was built and the new standard required the buffers to protrude further.

Old friends reunited. Mr Graham King, the man who returned 828 to operation in the early 90s after she had slumbered for 30 years stands beside his former charge. A combined age of 197 years and both still capable of a hard day's work...!

Following some final electrical work on 30/03 by Paul Blount the lathe was returned to operation. Nathan Lightowler machines the bore of the RH Big End bearing (and catches the valuable white metal swarf in a strategically positioned bucket.

Scrapers at the ready to tackle the LH Big End

Scraping underway. It takes a while because of the generous radii at the end of the crankpin. The bearing has to be bedded onto the radii before it comes into contact with the parallel portion of the pin.

The RH Big End fully fitted to its crankpin and temporarily held together by a special clamping tool. Great work by Nathan and Bennie in getting the fit achieved.

The tender minus its brake rigging thanks to Dave Green. Also in the picture is the horrid spring that forms part of the drawbar between loco and tender. A very bad joke perpetuated by JF MacIntosh on the CR fitting staff. If anyone wants to find out why you are welcome to come along and refit it when the tender is recouped to the loco...

Not 828 but a very nice picture from 30/03 by Dave Green showing 46512 doing what we expect 828 to be doing in a couple of months.....