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:
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