News, 14 March 2025
News. 14 March 2025
A quick reminder that the second draw of the 'D5910 Lottery' will be drawn tomorrow (Saturday). It's not too late to enter and you would be in with a fair chance of winning up to £250 whilst helping the project raise funds. Follow this link to find more information and to enter the draw.
This week has seen the team continuing with the engine (static) testing. A few weeks ago the engine was filled with water to test it for internal leaks. A (previously acquired) Stroko heater has been loosely refurbished and now works fairly reliably. Providing 30kW of heat input, it raises the temperature of the engine from ambient to around 60 degrees C in around 50 minutes. With the engine at this temperature we were confident enough to apply pressure to the coolant system. The photo below shows the loco during the heating test, the blue pipe is a drain from the loco to, er, the drain.
Man poses whilst pretending to do something.
The heater set up is shown to good effect below. The heater (green, bottom left) circulates coolant (using the pump on the side of the heater) through the circuit. The circulation is in the reverse direction to the normal circuit for no reason other than the pipework arrangement was easier....
The coolant is drawn from the engine (large bore pipe below the exhaust outlet (white hardboard cover fitted)), through the heater and back into the engine through the other large bore pipe. The branch off between the heater and the engine is the drain. The translucent vertical pipe is the make up pipe through which the system is filled. The small bore pipe to the handpump on the lower right is to allow us to pressurize the system for testing.
Out of view is the vent pipe which emerges from a venting vessel fitted at the uppermost point on the engine (B bank exhaust manifold) allowing any trapped air in the system to be released.
