The East Somerset Railway has given a further update on their overhaul project of steam locomotive No.5239 Goliath.

For those that don’t know, No.5239 Goliath arrived at the East Somerset Railway from The Dartmouth Steam Railway, where the overhaul began in October 2017.

The horn grinding has been finished by the team working on the locomotive. The new axle box crowns have now returned from the wire eroders. The railway had previously turned the outside diameters and the lengths and the wire eroding machines were used to cut the serrations.

Now that these have returned, work has now started white metalling them and then the long task of adjusting the amount of interference fit to get the correct tonnage to press them into the axle box can commence. This job consists of manhandling the very heavy axle box into the press and trying to get the crown in until it gets to tight and then derigging the press and turning the box over to press the crown back out again.

After this has been completed, more machining can be completed to take a little bit more off before the process is then repeated once again. Sound hard? Yes, it is, but unfortunately, there is no other (and potentially easier) way of doing this job.

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