The Chairmans Birthday working day

The Fenchurch Fund Chairman spent the day on Saturday working with the engineering team of the Little Loco Group.  Here are a few pictures from the day.


We start off with a couple of pictures of the components that have recently been returned from Statfold Barn where they were metal sprayed and ground round.  The photos do not really do them justice, a great job was carried out on them.

The left hand valve rod

 

The right hand valve rod

The chairman was tasked with cleaning up parts of the brake rigging with powered wire brushes and sanders. a couple of pictures below including after painting by Jim Turtle our painter in residence.

One of the items of brake rigging

Jim busy with a paint brush!

 

The main job for the day was more drilling, reaming and riveting on the drag box, around 10 rivets were installed by the gang, it would have been more, but owing to rain and loss of light we needed to stop earlier than originally planned.

Setting the angles onto the rear buffer beam true and square

 

Ben cutting holes in the angles, through the holes in the frames

 

A closer view of the business end of the cutter

Rivets gently warming to a cherry red before being transferred to the holes and riveted over

 

 

Sean carrying the rivets from the forge to the correct hole in the frames

The hot rivet located in one of the holes between the drag box and stretcher

 

Matt riveting over the protruding head



six domed and two countersunk rivets completed

Finally a picture showing the joys of working in the open air!

Sean, Ben and Matt inspecting the work carried out in the rain before calling it a day.

From the last two pictures you can see that the working conditions are not ideal.  We are currently looking at options to improve this including temporary, interim and permanent solutions.  This will cost a fair amount of money to sort out, but to improve the working conditions, leading to a more efficient use of time it might well be worth it.  We are in the early stages of thinking about this at the moment, so watch this space!

Remember, all of this has been possible with the generosity of people like you that are interested in the project.
Without your support we cannot carry on at the same rate experienced so far.
Please donate anything you can afford if you would like to see our efforts and passion come to a successful end.
A donation of £27 would go a long way towards our aim.
(with gift aid that becomes £33.75)

If you can help us, please make your donation on line at: http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fund/27

You can also give via standing order to the Bluebell Railway Trust (please contact us for a form) or regular payments via Virgin Money Giving.

We are a completely self funded group of Bluebell Railway Volunteers working hard to look after and promote the small locomotive fleet on the Bluebell Railway.