Work this month has remained focused on the overhaul of 31463, starting on the power unit, this has had all 12 new cylinder liners fitted, which is a massive tick in the list of jobs.
The fuel header tank which was removed from the boiler room / radiator compartment has been cleaned, stripped of paint and where the fuel header tank sits in the roof has had the same treatment, plus the areas where we couldn’t reach if the tank was installed, then both painted in primer followed by grey gloss. The bolt holes have been re-drilled where the new steel was welded to the roof and all holes tapped out to clean the threads. Once the paint had dried the fuel tank was refitted and bolted down. The disc to cover the boiler exhaust hole has arrived, this has been formed to get the right profile of the roof and welded into place. Scrapping of the inside to remove the oil residue has continued and as soon as we can get the roof turned over the wrong way up we will prep and paint the inside.
The roof section that goes over the power unit has been turned the right way up and turned 90′, then the roof hatch doors and walk way removed for attention. This has had all the gutters cleaned back to bare metal. Where the gutters join the frame, rust was in between pushing them apart, this has been cleaned out and welded back together. The roof hatches have had all the outer edge internally cleaned to bear metal, this wasn’t possible when the panels were in situ.
With space now available in the lower part of the wagon, this has allowed the electrical cubicle roof section to be moved down so we can start work on this. More rot and dented steel removed, and fresh plate cut to size and rolled to the correct curve before being welded into place. On this particular roof section, we’ve had to cut larger pieces of steel out than we’ve had to do on the rest, which meant trying to roll a ‘compound radius’ onto the new pieces. A bit of trial and error required to get these something close to correct. On the opposite side of this roof, some of the weld plugs were drilled and the panel pulled back from the frame to clean the rust out.
On the roof sections for the power unit and turbo’s the electrical conduits have been stripped, primed and top coated then refitted.
We have trial fitted the first roof brace on the loco, this required a little bit of modification and fits correctly now. We started cutting channel for the brace at the other end as this has a different shape to the others and basically modifies standard sections that were produced off site. The reasonings behind this are the facts that the original literally turned to dust during roof removal, and also careful modification still gives us the correct arc profile. This has been tack-welded into its intended shape pending trial fitting, but it’s looking good so far.
Brackets for electrical conduits, pieces of electrical conduit and various pieces of water pipework have all been stripped and painted in primer then gloss.
A piece of steel has started to be machined to be used to push out the little end bearings on the conrods.
The batteries on the loco have had an inspection and top-up.
The banjos for the fuel system have been cleaned in the parts washer.
Last but not least, we have finally taken delivery of most of the parts required to rebuild the power unit so we should hopefully see some more leaps forward on this task over the next few weeks.
