Renewing Joyce's Superheater (2)

When employing a person or organisation to work for you,
what kind of relationship do you expect to have with them?

There is always an element of risk when engaging a subcontractor. I like to make use of people I already know or are at least within easy reach. Thus I can pop in from time to time to check on progress or discuss any difficulties that could be looming. If unable to visit, then talking on the phone is a good second best. In this way, I've found that I get a good understanding with the contractor, become confident in their ability and have no fear about using them again. In contrast, to attempt to achieve this level of mutual understanding purely by email or social media is doomed to failure and should be avoided at all cost.

With frequent face to face contact, a customer is involved in the process. When problems arise, because the customer knows the bigger picture, it is often possible to find a simple solution which the contractor on their own might not be aware of. For a one-off construction, the customer needs to know the difficulties; otherwise, they are blind to potential problems that could arise later during use.

J R Goold Ltd and Mendip Steam Restoration Ltd became long standing friends of mine while working on Joyce's restoration and I know they are pleased to hear from me at any time. They have always helped me as far as they possibly can and it's great to know they are always there when I need advice or support.

When I worked at Westinghouse, the railway signalling company in Chippenham, one of the values bred into us was Integrity. Say what you mean, mean what you say and be open with people was my interpretation.

Through integrity and open communication, trust is established. If people are not straight with you, mistrust arises and it's difficult to rebuild trust once lost. If communication is limited to email or social media only, it will take very little time before the recipient has misunderstood an intention and trust will unwind rapidly.

Contractors know that by building a strong personal relationship with their customers, they will have a much better chance of further work from them in future. Likewise customers will know they have a reliable contractor they can turn to when the need arises. I don't think this is rocket science and I apologise if this is stating the obvious.

The Job:

Part of this job entailed RBS using Atlas Tube Bending Ltd as a specialist subcontractor. RBS director Allan Schofield commented in an email that, for producing 'upset tube ends', "Atlas and seemingly no one else can do this". I'd chosen RBS for the work partly because they were close to Atlas so it was reassuring that there was agreement in this. The other reason for using Atlas was because they had done the same job for Sentinel 9622 a year or so earlier. [I asked the question as to what 'upset tube ends' were but received no answer].

The tubing had to be ordered by RBS for Atlas to use. Whilst it would have been possible to use readily available tube material, Allan suggested, and I agreed, that hot-drawn seamless steel tubing should be used even though it meant sourcing it from Germany. This would cause some delay but I felt it was acceptable for getting a longer lasting superheater. [I asked if the tubing would meet specification EN 10305/1 but never received a reply. I also asked what the outside diameter of the tubing would be and its wall thickness. Again, no reply. I still do not know.].

I was invoiced up-front for the material cost (£1547, Invoice 7109/SH/001 dated 31/1/2023). Paying up-front was not comfortable but it was what was asked so I paid it. The invoice came from Unit 21, Gill Street, Moston, M9 4HA.

A second invoice arrived for initial manufacturing of small parts listed on quote RBS104 (£2353, Invoice 7109/SH/002 dated 14/2/2023).

The invoice came from Unit 21, Gill Street, Moston, M9 4HA and I paid as requested.

New Clamps for securing coiled tubing
(Photo: A Schofield for this contract)

A third invoice arrived for more bits and pieces but it had the same invoice number as the second. I'd received it from Lea Mottley; she quickly realised the mistake and promptly sent a correctly numbered replacement (£3534, Invoice 7109/SH/003 dated 9/3/2023).
The invoice came from a different address: Unit 11, Bradley Fold Industrial Estate,

Radcliffe Moor Road, Radcliffe BL2 6RT. Photo above.

I managed to call Lea and she explained that in fact RBS had moved. Checking the map, the new premises were about four times the distance away from Atlas. I didn't think this was good news as someone would have to pick up the bill for the extra travelling distance between RBS and Atlas.

21st June 2023: RBS premises at Unit 11, Bradley Fold Industrial Estate,
Radcliffe Moor Road, Radcliffe BL2 6RT.

I was really rather more concerned that my subcontractor had moved to a new address and not told me and not even made the intention to move known when I was agreeing to work with them.

Lea was helpful with news of progress and I was happy with that until about the end of February 2023 when my calls stopped being answered. I could not understand the reason for suddenly terminating communication and was emphatically not happy that I was no longer receiving any information on progress.

I had previously had a few calls with Allan but, once Lea had become available, it was much easier to communicate with her. With Lea's sudden disappearance, I attempted calling Allan but to no avail. His failure to pick up the phone after many, many attempts left me with severe doubts about what was happening and suspicions that I was being deliberately kept in the dark.

With nearly £7500 paid over by this time, I was becoming distinctly uneasy.

In a contractual situation, if someone flatly refuses to answer the phone to you, what are you supposed to think?
Is work not actually being done on my job or is there something even more sinister being hidden? 

Also, and perhaps I'm naïve here, but it seems odd that at neither Unit 21, Gill Street nor Unit 11 at Bradley Fold had RBS proudly put their name on the outside of the building.

I'll leave you to ponder how these events might be affecting my feeling of trust in RBS.

I visited RBS at Unit 11 on 21st June 2023 but that will have to wait for the time being.

Renewing Joyce's Superheater (1)

The Prologue:

I've commented to many that Restoration is sexy but maintenance isn't. Restoration has drive as there is a goal to achieve whereas maintenance is a thing you have to do just to stand still.

Leading up to February 2016, there were six years of anticipation driving myself and former co-owner Nigel Dickinson to bring Joyce back to steam. Then there were six years of relatively trouble-free operation, a lot of learning and plenty of fun and fascination for Joyce's visiting admirers.

Topping off the fun in June 2022 was a 'Mini-break' to attend the S&D steam gala at the Gloucester-Warwickshire Steam Railway. Joyce was a real star and particularly enjoyed by the footplate crews. Even for big galas such as this one, the hired-in locos are generally at least vaguely similar in shape. Joyce caused a consternation with her vertical boiler upright in the cab. She was the most different loco ever to visit the GWSR.

Returning to Midsomer Norton after the gala, I was laid-up with COVID and out of action and Joyce was behaving very strangely. It was proving difficult to keep steam pressure and there was an ominous roaring noise coming from somewhere around the boiler.

Once recovered from COVID, I did a number of test firings to isolate the source of the noise. Hoping to find a nice simple fault such as the new fusible plug leaking, the problem turned out not to be a boiler leak as someone suggested but a pin-hole in Joyce's superheater coil.

The arrow shows the 1mm diameter hole in the second to inner coil.

It was soon obvious that this was going to be more challenging than any task during restoration.

There were two options ahead:

1. To weld the hole and carry on.

2. Obtain a new superheater.

I chose the latter as removing the superheater assembly was not an easy task. Knowing the history of the superheater, I considered it likely that there would be more failures of a similar type. I did not want to leave a frequent failure problem to Joyce's future custodians. There was also a broken bracket and some of the support pieces looked very tired.

Being a high temperature, high pressure boiler item, I am not qualified to do this kind of work and a competent person or company would be required.

The Challenge:

I began by consulting Justin and Grant at J R Goold Steam Ltd and boiler maker Mendip Steam Restoration Ltd. These two small companies have done much difficult work for me in the past but could not help with this job. I later learned that the difficulty was not with the fabrication of the superheater but the forming of the coils.

Tube bending was outside the scope of Mendip Steam's activities; however, 
J R Goold were regular producers of Sentinel boiler superheaters. The problem for them was that most Sentinel boilers are sized to supply steam for a Sentinel steam waggon's single engine whereas Joyce has a much bigger boiler to supply her two engines and there are only two Joyce-type boilers in the UK. Whilst it is economic to be kitted out for producing substantial numbers of the smaller superheaters, for only two larger ones, it just isn't feasible. So I was left with a difficult problem. Midsomer Norton's workshop facilities are not capable of doing this type of steam work so I had no choice but to look elsewhere.

Martin Staniforth, owner and restorer of Sentinel 9622, the other double-engined loco, told me he had used a tube bending company in Oldham called Atlas Tube Bending Ltd to make him a new set of superheater coils. It was obvious to me therefore that this was the company to use as they already had prior experience of the work. I later discovered that Atlas had done many more Sentinel superheater coils for single-engined locos. But Atlas were in Oldham, over 200 miles from me, and I didn't fancy the prospect of dealing with a company so far away.

At this point, Barrie Papworth, Midsomer Norton's Chief Mechanical Engineer, recommended Allan Schofield of Railway Boiler Services Ltd to me. RBS were based in Moston, Manchester, 3.5 miles away from Atlas - a seemingly obvious opportunity.

I began formal discussions with Allan on 21st September 2022 with a fairly broad customer requirement:

"What I really want is a complete new superheater fitted to the boiler top-plate including chimney units such that the whole assembly can be lowered into place with minimal fitting effort.

I'd like it by the end of February 2023 to allow us time for fitting etc.

Some thoughts/assumptions:

The superheater pipe end fittings would need to be reused.

Peter Hawkins [my boiler inspector] would need to witness a hydraulic test at 550psi."

Allan responded on 23rd September 2023:

"...the job, as you’ve described, looks pretty straight forward and the time scale very achievable." 

That would mean delivery by the end of February 2023.  It would leave a month at MSN to refit the chimney units to the boiler top plate and reassemble the boiler in time for the start of the 2023 running season.

So I was happy to go ahead and Allan agreed to take on the work. Although quoted costs were a lot more than I wanted, to have a one-stop-shop to produce the completed superheater was a very attractive proposition. Although having a contractor so far away seemed risky, I was not too concerned because our CME Barrie had personally recommended Allan.

The Beginning:

RBS Premises at Unit 21, Gill Street, Moston, Manchester in October 2022

The old superheater assembly was transferred to RBS at the end of October 2022 so a quote could be produced. I met Allan at the Moston RBS premises on October 31st 2022 and discussed the job. All seemed reasonable so I formalised my requirements and Allan responded with a quote for the work. We agreed that WhatsApp would be a good way to communicate.

Here is quote RBS104 that I accepted (Click the quote to enlarge):

Initial quote RBS104

Allan advised me to take the cast clamp option and that was my choice. Later the cost of the superheater tubing was added at £1547 making a total of £9745.87.

I accepted the quote for the work involved and the associated costs. Whilst I was a little less formal than I can be with requirements, to date my experience with steam engineers has been that the contractor knows the work better than the customer and gets on with the job so super-formality is not generally necessary for fairly simple jobs such as this. All the work was itemised and costed in the quote.

All seemed good. Joyce would be running again for the 2023 season.

So why, I hear you ask, am I still waiting for the new superheater in mid-April 2024?

All will become clear in due course.

"I'm Still Here"

After some considerable time without any blog posts, I'm hoping to do some catching up.

My original intention was to record the restoration activities of Joyce so that I would be able to refer back later - it's easier and quicker than actually dismantling an assembly to recall what I did years before. For me, it has been useful on many occasions; I hope it has been helpful to others too.

Of course, the restoration finished in earnest in 2016 when Joyce began pulling passengers. I didn't want to just show pictures of Joyce in action as many others have done that better than me (it's difficult to take good photos from the driver's cab!).

Joyce has been pretty reliable for a steam locomotive but she's kept me on my toes to achieve that. Having J R Goold Steam Ltd close-by has been a godsend for rapid repairs and I am very grateful for their amazing support in times of need.

There have, however, been a few little problemettes...

Here was an unwelcome sight one Sunday morning in May 2021 while getting ready for passenger train duties.

Tell-tale Jet of steam

This was a pin-hole in the main steam pipe feeding Joyce's rear engine. Needless to say, she didn't run that day.

Pin-Hole

I contacted my Goold support team and a new pipe was made then lagged and fitted by me in about 8 days.

New Pipe

The new pipe fitted perfectly. Godsend is the right word.

Ready to go again

How are the new fire-bars performing?

I'm glad someone asked me that. Perhaps a video clip will help... 

I hope you enjoy this.

I guess the answer is... Grate!

Not So Grate!

Most of the Sentinel 7109 articles I've written in this 'blog over the last 8 or so years have been fairly upbeat although I did get frustrated with gland packing not so long ago.

However, not all goes as well as I'd like and I've had a new downer to deal with. I've shown the photo below a number of times to illustrate the how the fire-grate began.

The Fire-Grate as new prior to first steaming in 2016

With an eye on environmental issues, at the beginning of 2019, at Midsomer Norton, we began using a cleaner Welsh coal. All seemed fine for some months and I did the usual half-yearly boiler and fire-box washout in August. However, shortly before the start of the four Santa Specials in December, the centre section of the fire-grate decided to disappear spectacularly as shown below.

Fire-Grate after cleaning at the start of December 2019
(After the first of four Santa Specials)

(This was the reason a diesel shunter was used as banker for the Santa Specials).

Obviously this was not great news and the timing was particularly inconvenient.

I've had to dig deep to figure out how this could have been caused to prevent it happening in the future. I think there are basically two causes, both to do with the coal.

The Welsh coal is clean; it produces very few 'volatiles' (the nice-smelling but smoky stuff) and burns hot. It also tends to disintegrate through agitation and during combustion. In either case, it forms a lot of 'dust' which sits around underneath the coal nuggets. Our nuggets were large, some about the size of three fists.

The dust tends to form into clinker and block the grate in places. Air then has to be concentrated through the remaining unblocked areas and causes hot spots which melt the fire-bars, a bit like a blow-torch. As the year progressed, the coal in our storage bunker became more dust than nuggets and so the amount of grate blockage increased as the year went on and finally precipitated the damage.

Anyway, in summary, that is my interpretation of what happened. All we have to do now is to prevent further damage and replace the fire-bars.

Traditionally, fire-bars have been made from grey cast iron. However, I've had advice that a 20-30% alloy of Chromium and iron is much longer-lasting than plain old grey cast iron.

I've taken this advice and, to be ready for the first 2020 steaming on March 22nd, I rapidly placed an order for a pattern to cast the new fire-bars from Chromium Cast Iron (the pattern has to be specific for the material as the metal would not cool to the right size otherwise). I had to purchase a minimum quantity of 30 fire-bars (which should keep us going for a while!).

The bars arrived just ahead of the delivery date and I am grateful to the staff at Cerdic Foundries Ltd for their help in a time of difficulty.

Quite a car load!

I've not tried a funding appeal before but this is one occasion when I think it is the right thing to do.

Including VAT, the pattern will be £2,400 in round figures - I have bought this.

Including VAT, each of the 30 fire-bars is £120 in round figures.

Please consider donating a fire-bar for Joyce. Donations can be made via PayPal or cheque (preferred as PayPal takes a percentage) by clicking here. I would be more than happy to entertain donors with a cab ride on your next visit.

Go on, you can do it! Thank you in anticipation.