With the tender tank now ready for lifting (hopefully due to happen in the first week of May), our attention has returned to the engine, continuing with preparations to separate the boiler from the frames.

This has involved activity in the smokebox, where a 3-4″ layer of concrete has had to be removed to reveal the smokebox saddle bolts, which themselves need to be removed.

Over the course of several months, Phil Morton has spent many hours in the smokebox with an SDS chisel, making one hell of a racket and getting very dusty in the process. Dave Horton has done a bit as well and most of it is finally out; probably one more day of hard graft will finish the job.

Here we see before….

….and after shots from Saturday 18th April’s working party:

Just removing that lot took all day, illustrating how horribly hard the concrete is and why progress on this has seemed painfully slow. The concrete was only added to make it easier to sweep out the smokebox, seemed like a good idea at the time, but we may not put any back in after this experience!

These are the smokebox saddle bolts (that hold the smokebox to the ‘saddle’):

The blastpipe will also be coming out soon:

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the loco, Ian Stamp and Jim Bailey have removed the exhaust ejector pipe, which now sits temporarily supported by the handrail and a length of rope:

To create space on the running board to stow the exhaust pipe (so that we don’t spread out all our parts too much at Ruddington), the sandbox fillers have been removed and will be stowed in our containers:

Finally, Jonny has been pondering what to remove next in the cab:

The cab splits into an upper half and a lower half, and the upper half needs to be lifted off before the boiler can be lifted. The aim will be to take the boiler off and place it on a well wagon so that our volunteers can set forth with removing boiler tubes and drilling out stays, yet the boiler can then be moved around if necessary if it’s on a wagon. The ultimate aim for this year is not only to get the boiler off the engine but also to sufficiently dismantle it (cladding off, tubes removed), so that it can be given a thorough inspection by the boiler inspector, with a view to getting quotes for the repair work.