The Tywyn weather mojo has retreated into the doldrums again with a dry but very overcast morning in Wharf yard as the team assembled and briefly pondered whether two person constituted a working party. But enough of such idle speculation, David Broadbent and John Olsen had a seized brake system to sort out on wagon no. 146.
Acting upon advice from the TR engineering department they applied fresh WD 40 and then whacked the offending part with a hammer whilst operating the brake lever. This did have an effect, but not the desired one, as the fixing bolt was rotating. A large adjustable spanner and a bit of grunt tightened the nut sufficiently that no rotation was possible and the whacking and pumping action were repeated; success, a small but visible movement. Further, more scientific, application of the hammer moved the brake arm along the bolt to allow the rusty metal to be cleaned up with emery cloth and a wire brush before being wiped clean and evil green grease (EGG) applied. With lubrication on the joint the brake arm could be tapped the other way to allow the remaining area of rust to be cleaned off and more EGG applied.
Flushed with success, or was it the hammering and pumping, David and John cleaned up the other brake arm bearing in the same way and gave it a generous coating of EGG. Proceedings were halted to wave away the first train of the morning and its full load of happy passengers and the way was clear for coffee time.
We took our coffee on the platform table adjacent to the museum entrance and we were joined by Ann McCanna and Andy Sheffield as he took a break from marshall duties. Our idle musings started with the attempt of a dozy truck driver on the new Machynlleth Bridge works attempting to perform a limbo dance under the railway bridge, and failing spectacularly. He did succeed in ripping the tipper off the back of his truck and causing traffic mayhem on market day! At this time Frank Yates joined us and we caught up with news with him.
Refreshed we went into the museum to retrieve the ticket machine to see if Frank could work his magic upon its wayward innards. Three heads commenced analysing the situation but were still thwarted in our attempts to get a single ticket to be issued without a second jamming the machine. Frank had come armed with some of the older tickets from our original supplier and a micrometer to check the new tickets thickness against them. There wasn’t really enough of a difference to account for the jamming and the other dimensions were examined; the new tickets were narrower, could that be the problem? We removed the ticket chute and Frank spotted a fixing screw hanging loose that allowed the dispensing mechanism to wobble a bit, we tightened that up. John observed that the chute had been modified at some point to allow for narrower tickets and a slight adjustment of the metalwork was made before the chute was re-fitted. A final adjustment of the ticket ‘gate’ to allow free movement of the dispensing tines and a test run showed promise, although it tended to spit out two tickets at a time. One final adjustment was the removal of the extra weight that Frank had fabricated during his last ‘repair’ of the machine as this seemed to be unnecessary.
Now the tickets were emerging without jamming, albeit in pairs, and Keith Theobald pronounced this to be an acceptable ‘cost’ for a working machine. With David’s bus departure time approaching we tidied up the work site in front of the Gunpowder Store, sprayed some more WD40 onto the remaining lower brake arm bearings as they were still rusted solid and put the protective tarpaulin back over the wagon chassis. The final task of the morning was for Keith and John to put the ticket machine back up in position on the support pillar by the lift lobby door and tighten the nuts and bolts.
Three rusty bearings were lubricated with WD40, two free bearings were de-rusted and lubricated with EGG and one ticket machine was restored to operation.
Photos by John Olsen