Friday 30th - Maintenance

The usual suspects back at Toddington again this week. PCA (Personal Communication Alarm) checks on both rakes. These are checked to make sure that a good tug of the chain inside the carriage successfully lifts the vacuum valve seal at the end of the carriage. The chain goes the length of the carriage and there are multiple points it can be pulled. We use the point furthest from the valve to make sure the chain is free and moves along its whole length.

 

 

On the end of the carriage where the valve is situated is an indicator tab painted red to help make it more visible to the train staff….although it sometimes needs a bit of a clean to help make the red show up better…

  

Normally the tabs all sit horizontal, but when the chain is pulled it rotates rodding attached to the end of the carriage and the tab for the carriage where the chain was pulled is rotated to the vertical. The guard can then quickly find who pulled the chain and ask them why they shouldn’t cough up £200…or whatever happens to be printed on the notice above the slack bit of chain inside the carriage (the notices are vintage too!). The rotating rodding at the end of the carriage lifts a vacuum valve…

 

…which then applies the brakes, not fully but enough for the engine driver to notice and react to in a safe manner. If you ever have to use this for real as a passenger, it will require quite a firm tug to overcome the friction in the mechanism. ..and the chain will only give from the end that has the valve, the other end is just fixed so that when the red tab is reset the chain is pulled taut again. The other job for the day was giving all the external side door locks and hinges a good squib of WD40 to ensure free operation, and applying Vaseline to the edges of any doors that had visible signs of binding with the frames. The doors and frames react to the damp and a wipe of Vaseline on the edges of those starting to bind helps keep them working and prevent them jamming up completely.