The 4MT sees its first fire!

I took the new 4MT Standard Class Tank loco to Urmston club on Sunday for its hydraulic and steam test, and to see how it runs.

It passed both tests with no issues at all. A few teething troubles were revealed on running it, but once those are put right under warranty I think it has the potential to be a superb locomotive.

The pictures tell the story. 

On the 'arrival' table at Urmston club. This can be raised or lowered by compressed air to suit the height of one's car load area. 

 The flight deck

 On the prep bay. I'm replacing the two safety valves with one blanking plug and one blanking plug with a connection to 'Boiler' Bob's (standing next to me) calibrated pump and pressure gauge (behind the loco).

I have filled the boiler to the brim with water, and Bob will pressurise it to 1.5 times working pressure (135 psi for a working pressure of 90 psi). If it should fail (which it won't as it has a manufacturer's shell test certificate to twice working pressure) there will be no explosion, water being incompressible.

 With its door open so Bob can check the front of the boiler for hydraulic leaks, here's a look into the smoke box. 

The blast pipe is in the foreground (the exhaust steam from the cylinders exits her to blast up the chimney), below the skirt of the chimney petticoat. The two big copper pipes exiting the sides of the smoke box are the superheated steam feeds to each of the two cylinders from the superheater header.

In the background is the the front tube plate of the boiler showing the boiler flue tubes that run through the water space from the firebox at the back of the boiler.

The partial vacuum formed in the smoke box by the blast pipe is what draws the hot flue gasses through the boiler tubes and draws the fire to almost white heat when the loco is working hard.

The small copper pipe into the side of the blast pipe feeds boiler steam to the blower, controlled from the cab this gives a blast up the chimney to draw the fire when the loco is not on the move.

The steam test followed the hydraulic test. This ensures that the boiler has at least two methods of getting water into it (the 4MT has a live steam injector, a hand pump, and an axle pump) and that with full blower to give a maximum fire the safety valves blow off at or just before working pressure is reached, and can dissipate the steam at a rate that holds the boiler pressure within the limit. 

After I'd driven the loco around the track a few times 'Boiler' Bob has a go, watched by Malc. Loco blowing off healthily through both safety valves!

The 4MT in its element - albeit on the short Urmston track.

Note that the cylinder drain cocks have not fully closed hence the steam from the front end, one of several 'teething' faults to be addressed before we take her out on the main track.

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It's arrived!

The Kingscale 5" gauge BR Standard Class 4 tank loco arrived this morning in a big wooden crate, all 15 stone of it. Once the rain stopped and I could wheel the motorbikes out of the garage (I needed to use the motorcycle lift) I could begin unpacking it.

The delivery man used his tail lift and pallet truck to unload it, and we got it onto one of my hydraulic trolleys so I could wheel it into the garage out of the rain. I used my electric drill to remove the many screws holding the lid down, observed the crate to be full of plastic foam 'squares' for packing and the loco invisible under a thick polystyrene sheet covered in shrink-wrap plastic. It was packed just as my Jubilee had been.

Bikes outside, end removed from packing case, ready to mate the hydraulic trolley to the (red) bike lift.

After lunch with the rain stopped I filled three bin bags with the plastic foam squares from inside the packing case, then as I had with the Jubilee, used a big claw hammer to lever off the packing case's external battens at one end, bashed the end off the packing case. I got the bikes outside, raised the bike lift platform and the hydraulic trolley to equal heights, removed the shrink wrap etc from the loco, and carefully maneuvered it out of the packing case onto the bike lift.

Shrink wrap cut, polystyrene sheet removed, and loco carefully maneuvered out of packing case onto the lift.

The edge of the packing case was overlapped with the bike lift to obviate the packing case and hydraulic trolley tipping as the 15 stone weight of the loco was moved out of the packing case onto the lift. The removable section of the lift (removable to allow a motorcycle's rear wheel to be dropped) made a good bridge between the case and the lift.

The packing case was then completely demolished flat so I could fit the bits into the car to take it to the tip later, and the 4MT was wheeled off the bike lift onto the hydraulic trolley for a good checking over and some photos!

 Job done! The 4MT on the hydraulic trolley where it will live when not in use.

 We even got a smidgen of sunshine to illuminate this lovely loco!

 Cab roof and back are removable (visible on the right, next to the loco) for driving and firing. The coal bunker is in the foreground (no coal in it yet) beneath which is the bunker water tank to supplement the water supply in the side tanks.

These are handsome locos!

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G-BOAC gets a nose job!

Very glad to see that Manchester has at last put in place an enhancement to Concorde G-BOAC. They have allowed Heritage Concorde to re-activate the famous drooping nose, a modification that has already been applied to some other museum-based Concordes.

The mod involves installing a mains electricity-powered hydraulic pump to pressurise the nose and visor hydraulic circuits. The nose now operates exactly as it did in airline service, using the original 4-position cockpit selector switch.

Selections are:

1) Visor up, nose up. The position used in flight and while parked on the ground.

2) Visor down, nose in the 'up' position. The visor has to be selected 'down' before the nose can be lowered.

3) Nose lowered to 5 degrees, the position used for taxying and take off.

4) Nose lowered to 12.5 degrees, the position used for landing to give a clear view of the approaching runway despite the aeroplane's considerable nose-high pitch attitude on landing.

Now that the nose can be lowered to 12.5 degrees, the broken windscreen on the P2 side can be replaced. The windscreen failed about ten years ago and was a constant source of embarrassment to us tour guides as we had to explain time after time to flight deck visitors why the two windscreens were not identical.

Thank you Heritage Concorde.

Here is the nose-droop in action:

G-BOAC nose in operation

The 4MTs are coming!

First batch of 10 (of 50 - all now sold) Kingscale 5" gauge BR Standard Class 4 Tank engines at Northampton for pre-delivery boiler hydraulic test and run-on-compressed-air test.

Should have mine soon!

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