At Urmston today, with 'Wildfowler'

Today was the second occasion I have run 'Wildfowler' at Urmston since I purchased her following the successful trial described in the last post.

Today, Jason Lau was there with his camera to capture the fun.

Trevor with his Polly tank, Peter looking on 

 Having filled the boiler with water, the capacious side tanks are next.

 Malc finishes oiing round as I fill the second tank.

A face at the window! 

Topping up the first tank (the balance pipe means as you are filling one tank, some water transfers to the other).

 Trevor's Polly and Jim's Beyer Peacock tank on the steaming bays. 

L to R Peter, Bob, Jim, Eddie, Stephen, George, Joe.

 The compressed air powered-blower is in the chimney as we raise steam, me keeping a watch on the fire and willing the pressure gauge to move off the stop. L to R George, Eddie, Malc, me, Peter.

 In passenger carrying service. I top up Wildfowler's tanks between runs.

 Barry on Dave's Black Five in the station, with me on Wildfowler behind.

Malc on the Black Five.

As last week, we noticed Wildfowler was not steaming as well after a couple of hours in service as she was at the beginning of the day. There appears to be clinker building up in the fire box after that length of running, which isn't dropping through the grate into the ash pan and therefore starving the fire of air, so we are going to experiment with a different design of fire grate.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Here's a video of Wildfowler on the prep bay, blowing off, ready for action: CLICK HERE

A few minutes later we run down the 'take on' track ready to join the main track and begin passenger services: CLICK HERE

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