News, 11 August 2023
News, 11 August 2023
The bulkhead closing plates which were welded in and primed last week have been undercoated this week. The photo below compares well with the last photo in this week's update to show the amount of work achieved by one man in one shift.
The same plates seen from the nose side showing the different colour undercoat. The nose (and the engine room) are a light grey colour to aid visibility whereas the cab is 'body colour' to look pretty.
These photos only show the work at one end of the loco, unseen and unrecorded has been the work on the other end cab and nose. To walk between the two (one nearly finished and one just started) really hammers home the amount of work which still needs to be done not to mention the amount of work which goes unnoticed by most.
The two brackets seen below are (upper) to support the left hand side of the desk and the two Driver's Brake Valves. The valves aren't particularly heavy but need good support so that the pipework isn't stressed by vibration. The large hole furthest from the nose is for the Straight Air Brake (standard Westinghouse SA1 brake valve) and the smaller hole is for a dummy Vacuum Brake Valve.
The loco will be dual-braked and so there needs to be a brake valve capable of handling dual brakes - this already exists in the Westinghouse M8A, standard on many locos in various forms. The M8A will be mounted on the lower bracket (note the laser line to set the precise distance from the upper bracket) and will be connected to the upper (dummy) valve by a sliding universal joint. Once complete, the visual appearance will be of a vacuum only loco - only the cognoscenti will know the reality.
