Thursday 18 July 2019

A rush of cash to the head!




Thanks to the generosity of the Ffestiniog Railway Society some more funding has been made available to the project. The KS4415 Appeal (http://www.ffestiniograilway.org.uk/news_post/2019-01-01-kerr-stuart-4415-appeal ) has so far raised around £10,000 of its £30,000 target which leads to the conclusion that if more people had those 1920s trousers that went up to their nipples they might be able to reach their wallets.. Anyone contributing over £100 will get a free copy of the Kerr Stuart "15 Shillings Change" brochure, and there are Gift Aid opportunities. I think this means that if you put £400 in we have to send a copy of "15 Shillings Change" to Philip Hammond.


Enough on fund raising, let's crack on with the serious business of spending money. The tasks to restore the locomotive can be broken down in three ways; those which require effort, those which require thinking and those which require money. So far we have expended a lot of effort, and applied some thinking in sorting out the drawgear and gearbox mounting. While there are still tasks which fit the first of these two categories (restoring the body needs effort, providing new injectors and fuel pumps need thinking), we do have quite a few components which need specialist input and therefore good old fashioned cash.

Number One is the crankshaft, dispatched to Farndon Engineering in October. They are now very close to forging the new shaft:




(That’s not little grub screws holding it together that you can see, they are plugs in the end of the oilway passages.)


Let’s hope that Nutexa Frictions appreciate the quality of the box the band brake shoes have been dispatched in for new linings to be fitted:





The packaging for the radiator, off to Exeter & Newquay Radiators is more mundane:





Also off for specialist attention are the cylinder heads to T&L Engineering:



In the thinking category, the pistons from cylinders 1, 3 & 4 have been crack tested. We’re pondering if cylinder Nr2 can be repaired or if it needs replacing:



The cylinder liners have also been removed for assessment:



One of the big challenges is the injectors (or ‘atomisers’) as they were termed at the time. Rick has stripped down one from the MDB2 engine (out of the roller), made a couple of new components and got it working.


The exciting little video of it on the Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/KS4415/ provides a real contrast to the pathetic snot of Diesel which it blew out on the first attempt. Fortunately McLaren drawing DL1693 provides the manufacturing details for all of these components and with increased confidence regarding how they work, we are getting close to the point of manufacture.


The governor & fuel pump assembly is the other thing which needs some thinking about. We do not have a full set of drawings for this unit. This is the assembly from the MDB2:



The governor is in the body on the right, which transfers and combines with the movement of the throttle in the body on the left, which then adjusts the stroke of the fuel pumps by raising and lowering the upper assembly in the centre box, which is operated by the cams on the centre shaft in the photo below:


If you compare this photo with the drawing in the 25th May entry, you can see that while the general principles remain the same there are some fundamental differences. On the GA drawing there are 75 different part numbers. Fathoming out how to re-create this may take some time.


It might need money and thinking, but it also still needs effort. Martin Greenland applies another coat of paint to smarten up the frames for the WHR Past, Present & Future event in June: