Mid Summer Update 2018

With the weather firmly on our side the team has made great progress towards achieving our goals of working towards erecting the new frames by the end of the year.

With a few weekends and a couple of days holiday to spare Matt and Ben have all but completed the drilling of all the holes in the new frame plates. Following on from this the frames now need all of the horn slots machining square and then we should be in a good position to erect the new frames.

Also at our last monthly working day in July the team got together and finally took the plunge disassembling the remains of the old frames into a flat pack P tank. We also welcome’d Russ to the team who made himself most helpful drilling and shelling out broken stays in the front counterweight.

The opportunity was also taken to have a good clear up of our little site and set-up a new area with better forklift access for assembling the new frames. Temporarily we have placed the cab in this area to help Clive and his team of Network Rail Employees on their Charity works days cleaning up and helping to preserve the cab from any further deterioration from the elements.

Offsite the cylinder blocks, as well as all of the fitted bolts and studs, will soon be machined at Statfold Barn with an expected completion date set for the end of October. So hopefully by the “Giants of Steam” event we should have the new block back on site and ready to fit.

Bird’s eye view with Russ busy removing old stays, Ben & Sean removing the final few rivets in the old frames & the new frames all drilled outside the Villa’s.

Matt gas cutting out some of the final rivets holding the old frames together!

Close up action shot of the old rivets being cut out.

The Team busy working away at dis-assembling the old frames.

Russ hard at work shelling out old broken studs from the front counterweight.

Russ hard at work shelling out old broken studs from the front counterweight.

The motion plate set & ready to come out.

And out comes the motion plate for re-use.

Meanwhile with the motion plate removed the disassembly of the old frames could start.

Chains re- jigged ready for finally separating the two remaining frame plates.

Finally the frames are disassembled.

The now “Flat packed P tank!”

With the old frames dissembled the site was cleaned up and rearranged.

“Flat packed P tank” moved back into the site previously occupied by the old frames.

Archive

Archives