35028 Clan Line

Excellent points. I personally think we are keeping the Duck Oil salesmen in business singlehandedly!

 

"....In all seriousness though - I love the fact we turn her out as best we can. We take great pride in her appearance, long may that always be the case."

...and your efforts are much appreciated by many thousands of viewers!! Well Done!

 

I take no particular credit for that - I’m very much behind the scenes. The boys who are in the shed every week are the real heroes for the locos’ appearance. I sign the cheques and do the books, that’s my job.

 

Our treasurer is also a regular member of the 34081 "Wednesday Gang" so the two disciplines do mix. I suspect he likes to see on what we spend our money.

 

I inherited my Grandpa's TT stuff. Here's my Clan Line, still running ok in full Spam Can glory.

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A few photographs of the current state of affairs inside Stewart’s Lane. An amazing job done by our favoured painter and finisher, with the prep work done by our regular members of the working parties at SL.

I never thought I would ever be associated with a Bulleid Pacific but not a day goes by that I’m not grateful that I got the opportunity to play a small role in the history of this thoroughly wonderful locomotive and society that sustains it.

 

Just on this - the things I enjoy the most are the touch up painting jobs. I’m reliably told my work on the M8 pillar in the cab lasted ONE week before a few shovel shaped chips were in it!

 

Oh those naughty engine crews.

 

I was warned!

 

The standard of finish of this Loco is absolutely stunning. The photo of the motion and wheels is cracking - It looks as if it's brand new and yet to enter service! The motion almost looks as if it's been painted silver - I take it the rods do still have their identity marks on them - There doesn't look to be a blemish on them at all, the lifting link and slidebars look absolutely new. Well done to all concerned for the immaculate turn-out of a superb machine.

Richard.

 

Yes they do still have the engine number stamp. After each run they are degreased with paraffin and then sprayed with Duck Oil to stop them from rusting. It’s the same treatment for everything below footplate level, apart from the brass which is burnished with Brasso

 

Know how you feel. More than once our cleaning gang has got 34081 sparkling only for an over enthusiastic fireman getting the valves to lift just as she passes under the A1 bridge coming off shed. Result - all the soot from the underside of the bridge brought down over the nice cleam paintwork.

 

I can also confirm the presence of stamps. Some of them say 35005...

 

Indeed, amongst other locos. We have a whole spare set of valve gear sitting somewhere I vaguely recollect. But this is no different to being in service with SR or BR Southern region as parts were swapped around at overhauls a lot.

That’s what happened - you take parts off one engine to overhaul and parts put on could be from another one.

 

More common in later years and with modern locos and especially workshop practice. With older locos it was much more common that locos were stripped down and then built back up with primarily the same components.

(A good source on that for SR enthusiasts is AC Perryman’s “When steam was king at Brighton”. In it he describes workshop practices from the 1930s but they probably hadn’t changed a great deal since the late nineteenth century. Typically a loco would come into a bay in the workshop and be broken down and then rebuilt all by one gang, largely from the same refurbished parts - not a particularly efficient way of working from the point of view of keeping capital assets in use. Brighton though was particularly backward and I suspect Crewe did things rather differently!

Tom

 

From my occasional observations of main line steam locos, it is striking that quite often you see Clan Line looking cleaner near the end of a long day in traffic than most other locos near the beginning. The Castle from Tyseley is the only other loco I have seen that comes close in standard of presentation. (Disclaimer: I have t seen all mainline locos).

Tom

 

Not a very efficient way of getting engine back in traffic I would have thought as the boiler takes longer to overhaul than the rest. Crewe worked on what they called a belt system, each operation was carried out separately and the locos moved down the workshop to the final stage before going outside for steam testing and the paint shop. The boiler would come from the already overhauled stock of spare boilers

 

I agree that '28 always looks immaculate and is a credit to her carers. I guess it is helped by being out and back from/to her home base most of the time, whereas some other less shiny locomotives are often 'away' for days or even weeks at a time, throwing up all sorts of problems for support crew issues.