We then got an offer from the trustees of the Birmingham and Midland Omnibus Trust Museum at Wythall, Worcestershire. Viewing this venue, the then chief trustee, Bob Lewis, gave us pretty well a free hand to build a miniature railway around the site, and thankfully, the area seemed as well as anyone could expect to be free from intrusion. Whilst my heart was at Tyseley, just ten minutes’ walk away from my home, the situation there was untenable and the decision to move to Wythall became unanimous.
The society now had a firm commitment to run trains for the public on the Wythall Museum open days. Unfortunately, most members only had smaller gauge engines and we could not always rely on these engines being available. The ‘Hunslet’ was quite poorly and it was the only engine big enough that could do public running all day with any success. Being by now established in the society, I therefore volunteered to have the ‘Hunslet’ in my workshop and work on her over the coming winter. Working on an engine this size was a new concept for me and I was quick to learn why 7¼" was termed ‘hernia gauge’.
As the engine had been wheezing quite badly whilst working, I took off the cylinder blocks and steam chests to see what I was up against. All was now revealed, the port faces had scored badly after having insufficient lubrication on the short length of track at Tyseley. Having been stood for long periods out in all weathers had done nothing the help this problem. Also, the gasket had blown between ports on one side and in addition to that, the pistons were a poor fit.
My mill/drill coped with machining the port faces and I cut new gaskets whilst Bob Court made new pistons. New rings were fitted to the pistons and all was reassembled. A lot of things were tidied up in general and a gauge glass protector made. The safety valves had been removed any number of times to fill the boiler at Tyseley and these were now looking pretty unprofessional, being badly marked by the use of mole grips.
Again, I narrowed the blast pipe orifice slightly and made sure this important component was correctly aligned in the chimney. From my days of passing the inspector for my driving exam at Swindon, I could still recite the valve events of a locomotive like I could the five times table. The answer came off the top of my head wherever the reversing lever was set relative to the ‘big end’. I therefore felt quite confident that I could reset the valve timing on this 0-4-0 with some accuracy.
Work on the new railway started in February 1995 and the enthusiasm was boundless. Quite large sycamore trees had to be felled and the roots dug out. The track bed had to be excavated and filled with abundant hard core which was freely available, as the site was originally an R.A.F. Barrage Balloon Camp.
Our track had to be ground level, therefore road crossings had to be made, these durable enough to stand the weight of buses; buses being the main theme of the enthusiasts who had originally begun work on the museum site.
Bob Court inspects my work after overhauling the Society’s ‘Hunslet’.
As the land was undulating an awful lot of work digging had to be done. The new railway line incorporated a viaduct over the original camp site entrance and a curving tunnel, long enough as not to see through it. Whilst the work on the line will always be ongoing, the First Citizen of Bromsgrove opened the full track circuit for us in June 1996. One of my rare successes at getting a magnolia cutting to root two years earlier was also planted by the mayor. Whilst this tree suffered badly from the local wildlife over the first winter, it has since matured nicely.
The First Citizen of Bromsgrove and Bob Court perform the track opening ceremony.
Our first museum open day had been Easter 1995, but insufficient track was yet available. We therefore laid the old track from Tyseley temporarily on the steep grass bank and ran trains. The ‘Hunslet’ performed well, as it was a very steep climb, but the downward trip did tend to cause some alarm and dragging of feet! One of the gaskets that I put in the steam chest blew out during the weekend, but the engine did keep going until the end, although rather shrouded in steam.
The following week, therefore, it did mean more time on my hands and knees with numb fingers replacing the steam chest gasket. However, the engine has since run on every open day and the valves and pistons have never been disturbed to this day.
Yet another job that needed to be done.
As the track laying progressed, we ran a shuttle train service on public days with one of the members’ engines on the opposite end of the train to the ‘Hunslet’. Nonetheless, we all had concerns that perhaps our only engine could let us down on one of these occasions and we could be without motive power. As every model engineer knows, the most unexpected problems are likely to occur with any small locomotive.
Out of the blue, an elderly gentleman came to the museum on one open day and asked casually if we wanted another engine. Curious, we asked him what kind of locomotive it was; his reply was that it was a ‘Highlander’. None of us were aware of what this was, therefore it was with some disbelief that we looked at one another when he elaborated that it was a 7¼" Gauge L.M.S. ‘Black Five’. With some scepticism, four of us went to this gentleman’s home on the following Wednesday. Quite sadly, we were told that the owner’s health made it no longer possible for him to do work on the engine. In addition, a public right of way had just been reopened passing the entrance to his back garden. He now feared that the engine may at some time be stolen. It was such a pity, as he had obviously put an awful lot of effort into making this loco. There was also a lovely layout, with scale station, signals and engine shed, etc. Although he tended to show little emotion when we brought the engine away, I can only feel sure he must have been inwardly devastated.
The Black Five, a very generous gift.
It was flattering that this new acquisition was entrusted to me and left in my workshop for the necessary work to be done. The steel boiler had been manufactured commercially ten years earlier and we were now in possession of the relevant certification. However, after such a period of time, the society had little option but to get the boiler out of the frames for a thorough examination. To add to this, none of us felt qualified to pass an opinion on a steel boiler’s safety and therefore the need for professional advice was inevitable.
I stripped the boiler out of the chassis; it was extraordinarily heavy, but I got it onto my back yard and put a pressure washer through it. The good sign was that no ‘corn flakes’ came out of it. To me, it looked fine, so I made the appropriate blanks and did a preliminary hydraulic pressure test. The only weep was from two countersunk screws which held the regulator valve in situ. These were removed and I found that the countersunk seat had suffered tool chatter. These screw holes were then carefully re-countersunk and with a touch of jointing compound on the screw threads a further test to 200p.s.i. was to prove satisfactory. A coat of red oxide then made the boiler look presentable and the arrival of John Glaze, a professional boiler examiner, was to be the first of many future visits for him to the society.
Reassembly of the engine took a lot longer than I had hoped, as the silver solder on the superheater had not taken in places on the stainless steel; any leaks in this area are a disaster towards good steaming and therefore had to be dealt with. A further test on compressed air was to prove that the valve setting was spot on, so after a repaint the engine was returned to Wythall to earn her keep. Several invitations to the donor were tendered; it was hoped that he would at least come and have a drive of his engine on a continuous track. He never came and sadly passed away a short time after. The ‘Black Five’ now bears a plaque to this generous man’s memory. Today, the engine remains a very reliable performer after some twenty years of service.
I was then asked to restore a Bundy clock for the museum; these large cast iron clocks were common on the City of Birmingham bus routes. Older folk will remember the corporation bus drivers inserting a key, which had their individual number on, into the clock to record their timekeeping.
Work starts dismantling the museum Bundy clock.
The museum volunteers had already cemented the clock
into the ground and I was led to believe that its ‘innards’ were complete. When I started work on it, I discovered that the pendulum was missing; in addition, when I took off the dial I was aghast. The motion work, this being the set of gears that give the hands their twelve-to-one ratio, had been cut away. This was so that a quartz movement could be attached to the back side of the dial in later years. Undaunted, I detached the movement from the casing, along with the time recording equipment, and took it home.
After wrestling with the two very robust springs the whole clock was dismantled entirely. The main front plate of the clock had been damaged by careless sawing of the motion work, but I managed to carefully polish this away. When the movement was polished and reassembled the clock ran alright, as I borrowed a similar pendulum from another clock to test it.
The centre drive spindle had been cut away also, and I therefore I had to renew this. Doing this, I became aware that it was the same diameter as my long case clocks. There was no internet search engine at that time and I was bereft of knowing where I could get any replacement parts. My decision then was to make the new motion work myself, to Alan Timmins’ long case clock drawing. This would be a deviation from the original, but at least the clock would again be serviceable.
My forming skills lacked a little when I made the new pendulum and at the time I also had little idea of how heavy this component should be, but after much trial and error the clock eventually did come back to life.
The recording mechanism was also treated to some T.L.C., although I could not get the time stamp working. This needed a large sort of typewriter ribbon; I tried several times to impregnate the original tape with a marking medium, but the ink either wouldn’t print at all, or it dried up in a short time.
My magnolia cutting planted by the First Citizen of Bromsgrove in 1996, having since matured a little.
CHAPTER SIX
It does seem to me now that attempting to make small clock wheels on a mill/drill with a B.S.O. dividing head was rather like making 3½" Gauge injector cones on a 6" lathe. After restoring the Bundy clock, I was approached to make three clock wheel cutting engines, a simpler, quicker, and more economical method of cutting clock wheels. Two friends suggested that they would finance the project, dividing plates included, if I did the work.
I did decide to make these devices, but the job did not go well at the onset and I became pretty irritated. The drawings were inaccurate, in as much as the addition of simple fractions seemed to have been lost on the designer. I had also heard people say that you can make two locomotives of the same design almost as quick as you can make one. This theory was to prompt me into making these three wheel cutting machines, but having to continually double check the drawings tended to make time drag on. I couldn’t afford to make the same error on all three pieces of work and therefore became pretty paranoid about any mistakes, particularly as I was doing the job for someone else. Making the larger components does back up the theory that making more than one at a time is almost as quick, however, when you come to start tapping innumerable deep 6BA holes in mild steel, then progress slows somewhat. This is a task that cannot be rushed, as breaking a small tap in any hole you are unlikely to get the broken bit out without some damage to the work. As time went by I found this most exasperating, there again, perhaps my heart was not quite in this job. I cannot see myself taking on anything that is more than one at a time in future, as this was one of the few projects that I did not really enjoy doing. Making three was indeed a chore.
One of three wheel cutting engines.
One of our society members had a 7¼" Gauge ‘Hercules’ chassis and boiler for sale, which I might add, a number of prospective buyers had already fought shy of. I was told not to touch it with a barge pole, but I did choose to see it for myself. Surprisingly, I was immediately struck with the new commercially made boiler, by ‘Kingswood’ of Bristol. This was as good a boiler as I had ever seen and I personally felt that the price asked was worth the boiler alone.
The chassis in itself was pretty awful; it was obvious that several people had had a ‘knock’ at it, as there were differing standards of workmanship involved. It had also been dropped at some stage and the valve gear bent. Consequently, someone had taken mole grips to the axles and chewed them up in an attempt to get the wheels to rotate. Despite this, I made the purchase, as some better parts of the chassis, I felt, could be salvaged.
My wife, daughter-in-law and grandson admire ‘Thomas’ at the Wythall Museum.
The chassis was taken down to every last nut and bolt; I then began again from scratch, discarding a number of components. Eighteen months of intensive work and the engine became a runner. Whilst I didn’t attempt to mimic ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’, I did paint my engine blue and call it ‘Thomas’; the society needed to draw in visitors and I felt it would be a diversion from the locomotives already available to us. After first steaming ‘Thomas’ on my back yard to test it, I took my engine for a run on the track. Unfortunately, working on the chassis upside down, I had put the engine brake hangers on the wrong way. This meant that once the tank was filled and the weight was on the wheels the brake blocks went tight against the wheels. Because of this, there did follow a lot of manual pulling and pushing of the engine whilst I attempted to diagnose what was wrong. I had not realised that all my antics had been recorded on video tape.
At the next club meeting, I then became the subject of much laughter as this footage was screened. Whilst I went along with the fun, I was quietly embarrassed that someone had chosen to ‘take the Micky’ at my expense. Nevertheless, my engine did become an exceptional performer, taking into account its size and lowly 0-4-0 wheel arrangement. It ran faultlessly until I sold it in 2005, but the earlier camera man chose not to record this at any time. There again, some folk’s reasoning will always puzzle us all.
‘Thomas’, passenger hauling.
I didn’t drive my own engine very much at all; my pleasure is obviously in the engineering. Yet ‘Thomas’ was a great hit with the children; having an engine of a different colour pretty well guaranteed us further rides. If children ride behind a red engine, then they must ride on the train with the blue engine; yet having this philosophy did rebound on me on one occasion. There were few visitors at the museum and those wanting train rides were somewhat lacking; it was one of those events that tend to attract the bus enthusiast, rather than families. However, on this day, we did have a youngster come on to the station who was not going to ride on the red engine, which was on the train standing first; he wanted to ride on ‘Thomas’. I was acting as ‘Day Manager’ for the railway and as there was by now such an issue with this child, I dutifully, on a single occasion, asked the driver on the red engine standing first if he would mind doing a circuit empty. This was solely to pacify this very tetchy young man. Later, as we started to get a few more visitors wanting rides, it dawned on me that we were a train short. I then discovered that the first driver had indeed taken his engine on to the steaming bay, dropped the fire and took it home, apparently grumbling that he did not bring his engine there to run round empty. Fortunately, the frustrations of temperamental adults are quite often outweighed by the utter pleasure of seeing children wide eyed in rapture at the sight of a steam train. As a driver was stoking his engine for yet another circuit, I one day heard a little girl enquire, “Why is he putting those black stones in there?”
Then there was the small boy who I sat on ‘Thomas’ to have his photograph taken. With a smile as wide as broad gauge, he commented, “These are better than computers, aren’t they?”
These treasured moments tend to make all the effort and volunteering for these occasions worthwhile. I did get great self-satisfaction from my next task on behalf of one of our society members. He had purchased a 7¼" Gauge 0-6-0 chassis which originally belonged to the Bromsgrove Society. The chassis had been well restored and ran well on air pressure, but the boiler had to be tested and erected into the frames. None of the cleading or pipework was ava
ilable so this needed to be replaced. Commercial injectors were bought for the engine, but I did have to make a new grate, ashpan, and other parts, including the superheater. This job took some months, but it proved to be very much a positive step forward for the society as this locomotive also became yet another stalwart performer. The owner was in regular attendance with ‘Bruno’ thereafter, so with this additional engine we were even less likely to fail with our commitment to the museum trustees.
Bruno returned to a grateful owner.
The owner of ‘Bruno’, Ken Warman, then donated two coach chassis to our society which had also come from the Bromsgrove Society, as they had no 7¼" Gauge track.
My next project was to restore these as they had stood out in all weathers for some decades; in fact, some of the axles were half their original diameter in places where they had rusted away. The coach chassis were well worth saving as the bogie frames were heavy cast aluminium, as was much of the chassis angle material. One pair of wheels was missing, but all the others were serviceable once mounted on new axles and re-profiled.
The Mettle for Metal Page 5