Friday 16th - Maintenance

Martin, Ian, John, Graham… Another type C inspection. This time on the maroon rake. The external was done in the morning…

…the usual crawl ensued, taking the opportunity to apply some gloop on any dry looking bits…

 

…to keep things that should be able to move moving, eg the brake rigging, whilst also taking a good look at everything…

…although I did catch Martin lying down on the job…

…but this seems to happen to all of us during these external underside checks for some reason. We found an “elephant trunk” toilet outlet pipe can polish an axle nicely…

…when it is resting where it shouldn't, and another elephant trunk which had just gone missing…

…helping to more evenly distribute cack all over the brake rigging. Perhaps the p-way team have found it somewhere and can let us have it back?

We also found some loose bolts on one of the electrical gizmo boxes…

…so Ian got the spanners out and tightened them up…about…

…urrgh…tight! Loose nuts and bolts, split pins, etc. are easy to deal with as we find them. Things like providing additional securing for the toilet elephant trunks, which are often difficult to get at, can require more thought and preparation and get put on the To Do list, like attempting to do something about the roof leaks found in previous weeks…

…but there is only so much you can do trackside with a ladder. Some form of moveable gantry would enable better roof repairs. Dangling off the footbridge in a harness whilst the rake was shunted up and down underneath was mooted. The type C internal exam (list of jobs shown in previous Friday post) was also completed by John and Graham whilst Ian and Martin were splodging mastic around in areas of roof that were, a) easily reachable, b) might possibly benefit. No pictures of the internal checks…perhaps next time! When we were finished for the day we went and had a look at what was going on down the side of the engine shed…

…the p-way blog has details.