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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Nether Alderley Mill produce its first flour for sale for decades.

Nether Alderley Mill

I've been a guide at Nether Alderley water mill since it re-opened in 2013 after full restoration by the National Trust, and a Miller since a year later. We have been milling flour for demonstration purposes during visitor tours since re-opening, but we did not have clearance to sell it.

Yesterday, however, we produced our first bagged flour which will soon be for sale at Nether Alderley, Styal Mill, Harehill, Little Moreton Hall, and used in foodstuffs sold in the Styal Mill restaurant. The hoops we have had to jump through to obtain permission to sell the four for human consumption have been considerable.

We have had to show successful vermin control (almost impossible in a medieval stone water mill) and be compliant in countless areas, have documented processes and signing procedures including batch and individual bag tracability. We had to pass audits by the Food Standards Agency and Cheshire East Food Standards among others, and most onerously internal National Trust standards for food hygiene! One presumes things were simpler back in the 1600s!

Me keeping an eye on the grain level in the hopper as the runner stone spins above the bed stone to mill it into flour

However,we have at last made it. Yesterday a group of Millers took two sacks of Suffolk wheat grain that had been transported from Styal Mill in a catering-approved vehicle and fed them through the mill stones. The flour was sieved to ensure nothing was there that shouldn't be (it wasn't), weighed into bags under sanitized conditions, sealed, and labelled.

From a bag of wheat to many bags of flour

So soon our visitors, and those to other NT properties in our local group, will be able to buy flour milled in our ancient water mill.

The finished product

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Two Jubilees at Urmston

Rain first thing, then dry! Good day at Urmston today.

My friend Adrian from Leeds has a Kingscale Jubilee like the one I had but returned to Kingscale in a buy-back deal for their upcoming BR Standard 4MT tank loco. Fellow Urmston member Trevor also has a Kingscale Jubilee. Both Jubilees were running at Urmston today, and very well they went, too.

I had an enjoyable drive of Adrian's Jubilee 'Trafalgar' and Jim's Venezuelan tank.

Click on any picture for a larger image. The last seven pictures are by Jason Lau.

A Quarry Hunslet and two Jubilees. Alan's superb 'Tilly' in the foreground, and two 'Trafalgars' beyond, with Adrian working on preparing his to run. 

Rick's rather nice 3.5" gauge Lynton & Barnstaple Manning Wardle 2-6-2 tank loco 'Yeo'  

Dave prepares his Garratt in the foreground, Adrian's and Trevor's Jubilees, then the Hunslet and the little Manning Wardle. On the left is a 3.5" A3 Pacific - together with Aiden's B1 (which was already running on the track when I took these pictures),and Jim's Venezuelan Tank (which arrived later) that was total loco turn-out today.
The Hunslet didn't run due to a leaking wet header. 

Early rain soon cleared to dry day

Me watching Alan trying to fix his Hunslet

Trevor preps his Jubilee in early rain

Adrian and me with his Jubilee

Mike on Jim's Venezuelan tank 

Rick with the Manning Wardle, on the inner track

A visiting model Foden steam lorry

The steam lorry's flight deck

Click on the link below for a trip around Urmston track behind Adrian's Jubilee 'Trafalgar' 

A circuit of the track behind Adrian's Jubilee

We also had a visit from this, seen here passing Abbotsfield park:

Model Foden steam lorry

CVR's 'Gronk'

John Stein's superb picture of the Churnet Valley Railway's 'Gronk' at Leekbrook.

The loco looks excellent after its re-paint at Cheddleton from faded EWS livery, but it could do with a bit of mechanical TLC.

When I was Consall signalman some months ago the loco was rostered on a service train. The practice, for 'down' trains coming to Consall from Froghall, is to hold the Consall home signal 'on' until the train activates the outer track circuit. The signalman then knows that the driver has that 'on' signal in sight, and that it can then be cleared to 'off'' and the driver will see this. This is 'approach control' and informs the driver, in the absence of 'distant' signals, that although this signal has been pulled 'off'', the next one (the Consall station starter) WILL be 'on'.

That day, the 08-hauled 'up' train arrived at Consall. As I performed the token exchange the driver said "don't bother with approach control when we return from Froghall" (as the 'down' train but UP the valley, so uphill). "If I have to stop at the signal we'll never get going again. I'm supposed to have 360 horses under the bonnet but 275 of them have escaped".

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Me, Malc and Lindow visit Daresbury track

Bit of a change of scene for our train driving this week. I decided to take 'Lindow' to Warrington & District Model Engineering Society's track near Daresbury.

Me with 'Lindow' in the station at Daresbury

It's a delightfully rural wooded track, at half a mile about the same length as our home track at Urmston, but very different in character as the videos below show

A very nice 2-6-4 MT tank departs the station
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbuZK6wHYxQ

Malc driving round the track
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wrRUB1h8wM

Malc whizzing past with 'Lindow'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Q3wLB1sRIc

Malc runs into the station
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyfNT3-lwVk

Me driving round the track
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jwCoAZmE7k

'Lindow' struts her stuff 

Weaving through Daresbury's trees

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Crown Inn, Goostrey, steam party

Will this be the last steam gathering of the season? 

I went down through the local lanes to Goostrey this afternoon on the little Innova motorcycle to the steam party at the Crown Inn. I didn't stay long as it was pretty cold, but there was a fair few engines there.

Click on any picture for a larger image.

 Full size engine and miniature steam lorry

Probably more rollers than traction engines present 

The late Fred Dibnah's roller 'Betsy' 

 Matt Jodrell (volunteer  steam driver / fireman on the Churnet Valley Railway) with his roller and living van. The dirty marks down the boiler were caused by the roller 'priming' on its way here from Matt's home in Crewe. 'Priming' is boiler water being picked up with steam by the steam feed from the boiler to the cylinder, and ejected from the chimney. Priming on a steam locomotive is usually caused by too high a water level in the boiler, but Matt tells me his roller will prime even with 1/4 gauge-glass of water if the boiler water sloshes around too much when on the move.

 General view towards the pub. It was bit of a dull and cold day buy hey, it's nearly November!

Matt's roller, with his living van on the left 

Peter Flitcroft (Urmston steam railway member) admires a very strange 'steam pickup'

 The steam 'pick up', with Ribble Steam Railway's roller behind

 The Crown Inn car park was pretty full of engines...

 The vertical boiler of the steam pick up, with the V-twin engine just in front of the steering column

 A closer view of that 90 degree V-twin steam engine in the pick up

Miniature engine and full size

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