Restoration diary

Tim & Dom did housekeeping duties around our vehicles, then started hoovering accumulated debris from under the cab floors of Renown & the rad compartment passageways. Ian & Pete fitted the last three big end bearing caps into the power unit. Dave started to free off the siezed handbrake mechanism in the no1 cab of Renown and cleaned & painted more cab parts. Now Steve & Sarah have recovered from their car crash enough to be more active, they visited site & I discussed various options with Steve for replacing severed cables inside Renown. They then removed some of the flooring alongside the elec cubicle and by the brake frame & started removing accumulated debris from under the floors. We had a quick look to see if any of the severed cables could be matched with their 'other' ends, and we think we may have identified those to the DSD relays. I test fitted a small relay board inside the electrical cubicle of Repulse, but the fixing bolts need bending a little to bring them back into alignment with the board's mounting holes. I also fitted the Battery Charge Diode. Kev Hand made a surprise visit & returned both reversers he was storing for us, as we are now in a position to permanently fit the proper one into Repulse.

Dave Rolfe continued measuring, cutting and fitting flooring into the no.1 cab of Renown. Chris Bodell painted some more cab fittings & panels, and varnished the completed flooring in no.2 cab, Ian & Pete fitted two big end bearing caps now the suppliers have sent Ian the nuts for the stretch bolts that they were out of stock of. They were in the process of fitting a third cap but one of the four stretch bolts seemed unwilling to fit, so they had to remove the cap to see what the problem was. Nothing was obviously amiss, but by then the light was fading, so they didn't refit the third cap. My two GWR mates (Matt & Roger) who had visited a few weeks ago again came up, this time armed with some 185mm through-crimps and a large hydraulic crimper, so in the morning we did a test joint to see how it looked, and the result was encouraging. After crimping both sides of the crimp, a layer of heat-shrink sleeving was applied and heat-shrunk. A large amount of insulation tape was then wrapped round the crimp over the sleeving, then a second layer of heat-shrink sleeving was applied and shrunk. We used the group's 1000v Megger to check if there was any leakage to earth, and the Megger result was a full-scale needle deflection to the Megger's capacity of 2 Mega Ohms (2 million ohms). Any reading over 1 megaohm is considered good, and as the Megger only registers up to 2 Meg, the actual reading would therefore have been higher, which means this type of crimp, which is rated at 11,000 volts, should be more than adequate for both the severed main traction cabling and the main ETH cabling, as the maximum expected traction voltage is around 1000 volts. If I can find someone with a higher-capacity Megger, I will repeat the insulation test. Joining the cables in this way will remove a significant amount of time, effort and expense from the work needed to complete Repulse. After lunch, we crimped the last couple of 16mm cables, connected them, then Matt connected four cables to resistors on top of the cubicle which I am too much of a shortarse to reach.

Dave started fitting new flooring in the no.2 cab of Renown, Tom continued work in the no 1 cab of Repulse, Chris T & Tim continued loading items into BG2 and rebuilding the horn air feeds in 30 with parts taken from the cab of 50037, Chris B spent the day painting power unit coolant and oil pipes, Ian & Pete refitted the last cylinder head and began fitting some of the water piping, Dom lifted the remains of the rotten flooring in the no.1 cab of Renown & cleaned out the accumulated debris underneath & Mark brought some recently acquired spares to site & undid the remains of one set of the severed generator cable conduits in the clean air compartment. Two ex-GWR colleagues of mine visited today, partly for a look at progress on 30, partly to advise me on possible ways to join the severed motor cables under the cubicle floor without having to rewire with expensive new cables, and partly to lend me their hydraulic crimper to put new lugs on a few more 16mm cables.

Ian & Pete fitted three pistons and two heads during the day, Chris B continued working in the no.2 cab of Repulse refitting internal panelling, and I fitted several 16mm & 35mm cables I had crimped new lugs on, where the originals had been cut off & fortunately they were still long enough to re-fit them without incident.

Very busy weekend on site. 50037 saw another two days effort on body preparations for its repaint. Vast amounts of filler were also removed from under the driver's screen revealing the full extent of the dents from a major impact sometime between 1982 and 1984. 50029 saw the spare cubicle doors removed from no 2 cab for storage in BG2. 50008's engine received further attention with more water jacket elbows refitted and head tightening. BG1 had a major tidy up after racking had to be dismantled to enable a new workbench to be loaded within it. And finally both locomotives were winterised with heavy tarpaulins fitted to keep the weather out of the engine rooms over the winter. Bodies on site Chris Dom Tim Pete Steve Sarah Dave Tom Chris.