Much of volunteers’ time this week has been spent on the very basic but important task of cleaning up the motion, frames and boiler of Furness Railway No. 20. An undoubtedly dirty and sometimes very uncomfortable task, this type of work is sometimes inevitable during the day to day work of servicing and overhauling our locomotive fleet. However, if the load is spread, as in this case, it doesn’t become too much of a burden on any one particular person and we are pleased to report that Mike, John Dixon, John Davis, Paul Balshaw, Tim, Roger and Fred have all buckled down to the job with the result that it has progressed extremely well. Hopefully we will soon be in a position whereby can move on to other more satisfying work!
Andy Booth appeared on Sunday and has started the job of removing the tubes from FR 20’s boiler.
Howard has made some more progress on Fluff with assistance from George, who came to give us a hand on Saturday.
There was no riveting last Thursday as the gang is waiting for some special wedges which will enable the more awkward rivets to be fitted on Wootton Hall‘s tender frames. 
Meanwhile, more progress has been made on the upper platework for the tender frames and the test fitting of components.
Keith has also been sizing up the position of the reverser stand on the loco frames so that other steelwork can be arranged around it.
The RSR’s Santa Specials along with the FRT sales stand have again consumed much volunteer labour this last weekend. Alan and Tim provided the music with assistance from Matthew on Sunday, Paul B and Mike helped Santa whilst John Davis, Jim, Alison and Jen ran the sales stand. That’s nine of us! With gales forecast, Tim and Matthew took the opportunity to be the first overnight campers in the mess hut to ensure that they were there in good time on Sunday and which we are told worked out well. 
Jim is seen herein festive mood.
Looking forward, the Trustees have approved expenditure on the overhaul of the tender springs and the supply of two spares. It is anticipated that the six existing springs will be uplifted from the shed on Wednesday.
The Trustees have also approved the expenditure for a new safety wire system for working at height. It is planned to have this installed throughout the heated and unheated sections of road three of the shed. The technical sales representative of the supplier is due to pay us another visit on Wednesday to finalise details. Finally, just to add to this spending spree, the Trustees have also authorised expenditure on turning tyres and/or journals on a number of wheelsets, namely the three for the Hall‘s tender, two for Caliban and also the two tender wheelsets for FR 20. The work is expected to take place in February. There is something else on the way, but perhaps we’ll leave that for another blog!
Alan has completed the latest edition of The Iron Horse which is now with the printer. And a reminder here that it is the annual Christmas dinner on Saturday evening.
Headline news for this week has been the arrival at Preston of the main components for former Furness Railway 0-4-0 No. 25, more recently known as Barrow Haematite Iron & Steel Co. 0-4-0ST No. 17.
Fortunately, all the planning and preparation paid off and the locomotive’s parts were safely offloaded from Martyn Soames low loader by a road crane and then secured on to the CCT frames. 
The CCT was subsequently, on Thursday, moved around to stand outside the FRT’s shed, forming a queue for attention no doubt!
In the meantime, work has continued to clean FR 20’s frames, wheels and motion on both Wednesday and Friday. Fred has now finished wire brushing the firebox and has made a good start on the boiler.
One of Cumbria‘s clack boxes has been brought back from Embsay and John Dixon has spent some time making a box so that it can be despatched for repair.
John Dixon has carried on and completed the work of demolishing the body of the CCT. 
This left only the task of disposing of the wood, which seemed to take a lot of labour – or perhaps it was just a case of people wanting to gather around a warm fire on a cold day!
Adrian did what he does best on Wednesday and started the job of dismantling the cylinder covers on FR 20.
Roger and Tim have been cleaning the motion and running plate whilst Alan has been inspecting the loco for the jobs that need to be done.
Fred has again been patiently cleaning down the exterior of FR 20’s firebox in order for it to be subjected to non destructive testing.
There was yet another riveting session on Thursday when another 50 or so rivets were inserted into the tender frames. 
It is reckoned that there are now less that 100 more rivets to be added before the tender is finished and a start can be made on the engine’s drag box. We suspect that Matt Gervis is hoping for a Christmas break before the latter is attempted to let his shoulder recover! Keith is seen here drilling yet another hole ready for a rivet.
The job of removing the cantrails from GER No. 5 has continued and is now on the last lap. It appears that the north side cantrail has yielded rather more swiftly to John Davis’s attentions.
Live Steam had a busy weekend playing three gigs in less than 24 hours during the Dickensian Festival at Ulverston. After another successful night at the Old Friends inn on Saturday evening, they went on to entertain the residents at Abbeyfield House after lunch on Sunday.
Tim took advantage of an Alan Middleton solo to join the residents and try out the comfy chairs – Alison reckons that he settled in very well and has threatened to make him a reservation for the future!
The band then went out in the cold to provide the Festival Finale on the Theatre Street stage later in the afternoon, attracting a good crowd in the process. This rather belied the rumour that they are always put on last to make sure that everyone goes home!
Another big shunt took place at Preston last Wednesday which saw FR 20’s frames being placed in the unheated part of the FRT shed. Tim spent some time wire brushing the inside of the firebox while Alan went for the cleaner task of removing the external expansion brackets.
Outside, at the end of Wednesday John Dixon had nearly finished the task of dismantling the body on the PMV, which will then be used to accommodate the frames of FR 25 on arrival.
There was a productive shunt last Wednesday when FR 20’s boiler was moved into the FRT shed to enable work to commence under cover. At the same time it was possible to release Caliban‘s wheels which were moved out by hand, with Ed Tatham and Alan Middleton seen here with the driving set. Thanks to Phil, Matt B and Ade who moved the stock around to make it all happen.
John Davis and Paul Balshaw spent more time this week in their efforts to release more of the south side cantrail on GER 5 while Paul Newton continued work on the L&NWR platform seat.
John Dixon and Ed spent time on Wednesday dismantling the body on the PMV.
Howard, Alan Ogden and Mike Rigg concentrated their efforts on Fluff, with Mike seen here trying to remove a stubborn piece of the cab footplate.
Fred was back at Preston on Friday with Roger and brought back from Embsay the high pressure water pump which was suffering from wobbly wheels! Roger set about making the necessary repairs and then subsequently also repaired the fan in the mess room which had disintegrated the previous week.
There was a further riveting session last Thursday although the absence of Matt G reduced the number of rivets fitted. There will be another session next Thursday. Keith is seen here fitting a step retaining bracket on the tender frames.
And finally, outside the FRT shed, Bill Croston’s new mural has been erected alongside the new children’s playground.
The first part of the shunt involved the transfer of the Class 47 cab from the Ribble Rail shed to the workshop where it will be turned around with the crane before being put on display in the museum. Ade and Andy Beswick are seen here conducting the move of the Class 47 at an appropriate slow walking pace. Unfortunately, despite their patience, one set of wheels on the accommodation bogie ran hot and seized about 200 yards further down the line, which brought the shunt to a premature halt whilst things cooled down and oil was liberally applied to those parts that needed it. The tendency of diesel Stanlow to dump its air without notice also delayed matters so it is now anticipated that the next stage of the shunt will take place next Wednesday.
Meanwhile, John Dixon and Tim set about removing the brick arch from FR 20’s firebox. This, like the shunt above, turned out to be a rather longer job than anticipated owing to the fact that the arch did not appear to have deteriorated over the past ten years. However, two and a half hours later the final piece fell to the ground to be barrowed away and the weltrol tidied.
Cumbria‘s clackbox has recently been brought back to Preston for attention, it being replaced at Embsay by one of their own. Keith and Alan can been seen here dismantling the various items and it looks as if we will need to order a special, no doubt expensive, tap to clean up some of the threads inside the body.
Alan Ogden has appeared again from the deep south west and was at work with Howard on Fluff.
John Davis has been continuing with the long and tedious task of removing the cantrails from the GER Royal Saloon as a prelude to the canvas roof being replaced. John achieved the removal of the middle section of the south cantrail this week. Well done!
Various people have been assisting with the removal of the top of the PMV and John Dixon and Roger followed up their work on Friday by removing most of the remaining wood whilst Fred enjoyed a seasonal bonfire with the unwanted pieces of wood.
Andy Murphy offered to operate the crane and, after fitting the lifting straps a few test lifts were made to adjust the positions after which a perfectly level lift was achieved.
The boiler was turned around to enable easier extraction of the tubes when the weltrol is finally shunted into road two of the FRT shed.
After some re-arrangement of the sleepers, the boiler was finally lowered on to the weltrol. A key milestone in the overhaul of FR 20 had been achieved.
Wednesday saw the start of the removal of the body from the newly acquired PMV. Andy Murphy is seen here preparing to light the gas axe.
Once some of the stanchions had been cut through the JCB was brought in to pull the components apart.
John Dixon and Chris Rycroft achieved some further destruction on Friday with a jig saw and, being the thrifty fellow that he is, John retrieved some of the wooden panelling for further use.
Keith is seen here with the rear buffer beam which is now ready for riveting into place.
We had another ‘Dr Who’ invasion on Saturday, but this alien, named George, was happy to be put to productive work removing rivet heads.
Fluff has received more attention from Howard, Alan Ogden and Fred, who applied some primer paint to the frames.
Some further progress as made on Friday by Mike and John Davis on removing the cantrails from GER Royal Saloon No. 5.
Keith was busy preparing for another riveting session on Thursday. The footsteps shown in last week’s blog have now had the steps riveted into place permanently.
Matt Gervis and Keith are seen here riveting whilst an aerial shot shows Wootton Hall’s tender frames and also Chris Rycroft, who was cutting the rivets to size.
John Dixon is seen here heating up one of the rivets; a total of around 50 were fitted last Thursday.
The main event on Friday was the emptying of the newly acquired PMV in readiness for the body to be removed.
In the main workshop Bill Norton has machined up a cog which will eventually form part of Wootton Hall‘s reverser – it is seen here with the reverser handle.
Ade has once again been prettying Caliban‘s frames with his paint brush whilst Paul Balshaw and John Davis have been making the most of some decent weather by putting more undercoat paint on the cab. 
Roger has continued his work on cleaning and painting the eccentrics.
There has been more work on Wootton Hall including the behind the scenes preparation of drawings by Bob who was present on Friday. The Thursday riveting gang of Keith, John Dixon and Matt Gervis has again convened. This photo taken last Wednesday shows the steps which give access to the cab ready for attention from the rivet gun.
There has been further progress with Fluff – Howard and Keith are seen here discussing the work in hand. John Davis also did some work on cleaning the footplate on Friday.
Work on the L&NWR platform seat from Preston station has also continued and Paul Newton is seen here doing some woodwork.
Finally, we wanted to share a photo from British Railways days of the FRT’s GWR ‘Hall’ Class 4-6-0 No. 4979 Wootton Hall which has been kindly sent to us today by Richard Greenwood. It shows the locomotive heading south from Eastleigh with what was presumably an inter-regional train, probably heading for Southampton and Bournemouth, on the 3rd November 1961. Thanks, Richard.
Dr Who returned on TV last night, but this photo is not of an invading alien creature but of John Dixon readying himself to remove more stubborn bolts from inside FR 20’s smokebox! We are pleased to be able to record that John won the battle with the bolts and that, subject to the removal of some concrete on Wednesday, the boiler should then be ready for lifting.
With the weather turning inclement, John Davis and Paul Balshaw commenced the task of removing the steel screws that hold the gutter on Royal Saloon GER No. 5 in place. This is to enable the canvas to be removed and replaced. Unfortunately, the screws have probably been in place for some sixty years so they are proving to be extremely stubborn to extract!
Roger has been preparing and painting the eccentrics on Caliban‘s driving wheelset whilst Ade has continued the task of preparing and painting Caliban’s underframes a very bright red.
There has been some welcome movement forward in the overhaul of Fluff. Anthony has been joined by Howard, Alan Preston and Jim Hanmer. Their combined efforts have released the engine mounting bolts which will enable it to be lifted out. 
It is planned that this will take place when FR 20 is shunted into the FRT shed after its boiler lift.
Mike has continued his work to track down electrical faults on the former FRT RMB. He is seen here investigating the regulator box.
Outside, Ted has made good progress with the garden adjacent to the path to the FRT shed and alongside the new playground.