The 35006 Locomotive Company Ltd has published a detailed report on work carried out on their Southern Railway Merchant Navy Class No.35006 “Peninsular and Oriental SN Co” during winter maintenance, this has been undertaken at the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Steam Railway (GWSR).

A brief overview of the work done to 35006, and other members of GWSR’s home fleet, has been covered here

Bearings

Winter maintenance started by putting 35006 on the lift at Toddington, to raise the engine off the ground. This was done to enable work on the coupled wheel’s bearings. Work on the bearings was quick, the most time-consuming task was removing other components, such as the springs, which were blocking access to the bearings. Once all components were reassembled, 35006 could be lowered and placed back on the ground.

Front buffer beam

In order to lift the engine, a lifting bar was placed under the front buffers. To allow the lifting bar to fit under the buffers, the vacuum hose, steam heat hose, coupling chain and protector plate all had to be removed. Once the bar was removed, they all had to be refitted.

Tender

The biggest task on the tender was to replace the rubbing plate, which as the name says, stops rubbing of metal between both engine and tender.

Blower and safety valve

A problem was found with the blower valve, as scoring was noticed on the valve body. The scoring was corrected, to ensure it was steam tight once again.

The Safety Valves’ seats appeared to have little wear, with the faces of the sealing being remade. Wear of the seats will be monitored and compared with previous wear.

Brakes and cylinders

The brake pull rods, located on the outside of the coupled wheels, have been removed, cleaned and repainted black before refitting.

Re-tapping of the hole was needed for driver’s side cylinder safety valve. This meant some of the cylinder’s cladding and insulation had to be removed.

Boiler

Inspection by the team showed the boiler to be in good condition, with little to no rust or corrosion.

All plugs, both washout, and fusible, were removed last year to allow the boiler to dry out.

These were all refitted before the annual boiler examination, which 35006 passed.

This now means 35006 is all ready to start operating trains in the 2018 Season on the GWSR.

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