25 901 ENGINE REBUILD PROGRESS!

13th MAY 2006: 25 901 finally spluttered into life again, after the engine rebuild. This was a very worrying moment for me, but everything appears to be fine, apart from a few loose exhaust bolts and a couple of minor electrical faults gathered over the 16 months of not working. We now have lots of shaking down and running in to do! Thankyou to everybody who has helped, this was no mean achievement for us and a real team effort.

APRIL 2006: Seems like it's one step forward and two steps backwards at the moment. We've finally managed to rotate the liners to where they should be, using a collection of large jubilee clips on the liner rim to lean on and some crowbars underneath. It meant we didn't have to take the pistons out again thankfully! Alan Cash has kindly craned the heads on again and we are currently torquing them down again. We are now more or less back where we were before we learnt about liner position!

FEBRUARY 2006: The Cylinder heads have gone in and been partly torqued down. Sadly they have had to come off again as we have only just learnt the significance of getting the liners positioned correctly in the block. Apparantly the valves hit the liners if you don't. This is a very sharp learning curve for us English Electric lads. It does seem if Sulzer can find a hard way of doing something they'll go for it!

JANUARY 2006: Finally we have the correct big end bearing shells, so consequently on a clear sunny but frosty winters day the pistons have been reunited with the engine. Many thanks to Robbie, Alan Cash, John Metcalf and Graham Hamley of the workshop for their help and advice. Now we only have 6 cylinder heads and an exhaust system to re-assemble, gulp!

33 002 BODYWORK REBUILD CONTINUES!

MAY 2006: Paint is appearing all over the place, including topcoat! sadly welding has temporarily stopped on cab 2 as Dave, our welder is being employed elsewhere at the moment.

33 002 going Dutch! Courtesy & © Pete Burrow	Look at that shine!	A shy painter skulks off!

APRIL 2006: Work has progressed on cab 2, what a mess it was under the BR bodgeup fibreglass, as you can see below. Though it's certainly at the stage where it looks worse before it gets better.

Behind the scenes in the workshop, panels for the new cab are being fabricated, definately nothing to be gained trying to repair these originals!

The loco has now moved into the workshop for the finnish of welding and for painting, for which we are very grateful.

FEBRUARY 2006: Work has started on the other cab! Along with continuing on the sides.

Alan Wadron has started connecting up the traction motors and has persuaded his colleagues to help manufacture some smart new terminal covers for them. Thanks Lads!

JANUARY 2006: The sides of the body are being consentrated on at the moment, whilst we prepare to start on no.2 cab.
The inside is being looked at, with the body side grills having attention and a lot of the strange inside guttering arrangement is being renewed. Also a start has been made on the rather odd design of internal gutters that are a known problem on Cromptons and inevitably ours is no exception.
John Morton very kindly helped us by putting in the droplights and the associated woodwork repairs on no. 1 Cab.
Sadly we have had to vacate the running shed for the time being as some roofing repairs are being carried out. At the moment the loco is tarpaulined down.

(These photos © Pete Burrow for which thanks.)