Month: February 2025

The major event this last week has been the boring out of Great Western Railway 0-6-2T No. 5643’s cylinders as a precursor to fitting the new cylinder liners. The first photo shows the borer located in the left hand cylinder and the motor, bottom right, connected to the borer drive by bands.

Chris Birmingham from Riley & Son engineers of Bury was in charge of the operation.

The next stage in the process is the machining of the new liners to fit, which will take place at Bury, and then the shrink fitting of the new liners (cryogenics is the technical term) at Preston programmed for week commencing 3rd March.

Meanwhile Ron and Ed have been reaming out some more stay holes on 5643’s firebox.

We have now received news from Williton in Somerset that Caliban’s inner firebox has now been removed:

With this in mind there has been more work this week on Caliban’s cab. Jon and Sim have been attending to the interior, John Dixon has been pulling the metalwork back into shape, whilst Tim has made further progress with the cab exterior.

Sam has been preparing Furness Railway 0-4-0 No. 20 for its forthcoming boiler inspection, seen here taking the opportunity to give the safety valves a thorough clean.

Some video here of the FRT’s ‘Austerity’ 0-6-ST Cumbria courtesy of Paul Newton who visited the Embsay & Bolton Abbey Steam Railway on Thursday.

Finally, it has been Alan’s turn to celebrate a birthday, seen here in the mess room with the obligatory cakes.

A short catch up this week.
Ade appeared with a fork lift on Wednesday to place one of Great Western Railway 0-6-2T No. 5643’s side tanks on its side. This has enabled Ed and John Davis to clean it and check for any weak spots.

Work has continued on the repairs and refurbishment of Peckett 0-4-0ST Caliban’s cab with John Dixon fabricating some pull rods to bring the entrance to the cab back into shape whilst Tim has continued to work on the outside of the rear of the cab to improve the surface ready for painting.

Finally, work took place on Saturday to remove the left-hand connecting rod from Furness Railway 0-4-0 No.20. Sam is seen removing the slide bar lock nuts.

The slide bars and rod are seen after removal, ready for measuring to remove unwanted movement around the little end.

As mentioned in last week’s blog, work has started on some of the winter
maintenance jobs listed for Furness Railway No. 20. With the left-hand
motion dismantled, Alan is seen measuring up components with a view to
eliminating the undesirable side movement around the little end that has been
apparent in recent times.

Ron Crowe has been helpfully cleaning up the motion.

Andy Booth has been tapping out the fusible plug holes in FR 20’s firebox
which will increase their size by 1/16”. New plugs are on order.

Work has continued on the overhaul of Great Western Railway 0-6-2T No.
5643 with rust being removed from the side tanks in readiness for new paint.
It should not be too long now before work on fitting new cylinder liners takes
place.

Member Jo Booth appeared last Wednesday with his scratch built ‘O’ gauge
LMS ‘Pacific’ No. 46222 Queen Mary, a quite amazing piece of work
considering he only started on the project last August.

Sam Middleton, Chris Rycroft, Jimmy Dutton, and Mike Stewart spent Saturday at Cheltenham on a
BESTT tubing course. Sam is seen here at work. We are pleased to report that
all have received certificates of competency.

Finally, RSR overhauled Peckett 0-4-0ST Hornet made it out on to the main
line and into Riverside station on Saturday as part of its shake down
programme.