Saturday 6th September and it was a hive of noisy activity in the No. 1 shed at Ruddington as TBLT volunteers had one of their most productive working parties to date.

With a healthy turnout of 8, our volunteers were busy on multiple fronts.

Jim carried on with getting ready to remove the top half of the cab, removing fixtures and fittings, a painstaking and often fiddly job, especially when some of the fasteners are decidely stubborn, a balance must be struck between brute force and not wanting to ’round off’ anything…..

Meanwhile, Phil spent all day chiseling concrete in the smokebox. Its removal is a prerequisite for disconnecting the smokebox from the smokebox saddle, ready for when the boiler is eventually lifted off the frames…..

With the tender now split from the engine and over the pit, Jonny, Philomenah, Simon and Jack were able to remove pipes and valves….

….with Jack and Simon giving everything a good clean with scrapers and paraffin before the parts are labelled and put into storage….

Meanwhile, Dave was using a angle grinder to reveal the rivets which hold the tender tank to the chassis. These rivets all need to be drilled out as part of separating the tank from the chassis.

To the outside world the loco and tender still look substantially complete but it is all this unseen hard work and graft which is part and parcel of overhauling a steam loco. Nothing seems to be easy at this stage but it’s a long journey and we are making progress. As Jonny remarked, tongue in cheek, “You can see why BR got rid of them!”