Happy New Year!

The New Years Day steaming saw over 100 visitors to the station, not bad for the weather. Jason and his family did us proud with mulled apple juice and cakes in the tea room and metal bashing displays in the forge, Ian and Nick managed to get the Sissons connected up in its new position and have also built a frame over the flywheel to take the spring gauges, so it now looks almost as it did when used in Bournemouth Tech. Once the base is in and the Robey can be moved over from the tin shed we'll have our three "college" engines in the same area.

The control linkage on the gas pressure raiser has now been connected to the steam valve and seems to work after a fashion, though a bit slow to react presumably because it was used to fill a large gasometer, not the short length of pipe we have in place. Perhaps I can persuade Bill to build us one.....

Despite the snow and freezing weather a start has been made on the Culverwell. During the stripdown a couple of interesting things were found, such as the slide bars having been wrongly fitted, probably while it was at Bristol Museum and we are now trying to work out what was driven from where: apart from the boiler feed pump, the engine also drove a large gearwheel through a shoe clutch on the shaft between the engine and flywheel, and a further smaller gearwheel through a dog clutch on the end of the shaft, presumably the latter driving some line shafting somewhere in Holts brewery.

The governor has been removed for fettling and partial reconstruction by Nick and Ian has welded some large girders dragged down from the car park into a base for the engine to replace the existing timber affair. The next move will be to shift the whole thing sideways four feet onto the new base and into position closer to the wall. The big question now is how to move the couple of tons of flywheel sideways in the rather restricted space without tipping it over while at the same time moving the baseplate onto the new supporting steelwork. See next month’s news for the solution.

Although the weather has not been too conducive to outside work, Jason has been moving the scheme for the new shed forward, with meetings with the planners and a few tentative sketches of the new layout. The new(ish) shed will house the West Sedgemoor Ruston diesel as well as the two Easton pumps transferred from Burrowbridge and the present occupants of the tin shed. The boiler will also finally have its own shelter which will enable us to clad and insulate it. Jason is also working on the plans for the new toilet facilities to be built onto the end of the tea room.

Finally a bit of fun: I've been playing with a couple of pictures on a website where you can create your own jigsaws. One advantage is you can't lose the pieces, so give it a try:
www.jigsawplanet.com/?m=pr&id=0736309f16d3025b
www.jigsawplanet.com/?m=p&id=852672d82a09916

Andy

Previous news for 2009 can be downloaded (zipfile) here

All newspages for 2008, including December's issue, can be downloaded (zipfile)here. Note that August's news got lost!

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