After quite a few attempts to rectify some very silly leaks which should not have occurred, the decision was taken on 20th April 2012 to lift the boiler out of the frames. The decision to remove the boiler from the frames was a hard one to take by Works Manager Ian Walker and the new Boiler Shop Manager Duncan Ballard, but the findings justified that decision. Once the decision had been made, our volunteers assisted with the preparation work for lifting the boiler. The boiler was out on the floor by the following Wednesday. Duncan commented that it was nothing serious, more an irritation, though to us it represented an intensely frustrating disappointment. The throatplate patches have been leaking since the boiler was commissioned last year and were showing no sign of settling down. Whilst the boiler was out we re-caulked some stays and replaced others in the fire area which have also been giving intermittent leaks. As with the main overhaul the work has continued as a joint paid staff/supervised volunteer effort.

It was while cleaning out the water space between the copper and the steel fireboxes, down near the foundation ring, that we made the most serious discovery – an old scrapped stay from the 1985 to 1995 boiler certification had somehow survived all the turning over, foundation ring out, firebox sides off, copper tubeplate out, and yet still remained inside the boiler. Unknown to anyone it had then slipped down inside the water space to lodge vertically sitting on the foundation ring and causing a blockage to the removal of solids deposited in the boiler. It was only found when we removed the otherwise inaccessible stays normally hidden behind the frames and then discovered excessive scale built up around each stay position. It was extremely fortunate that we found this problem, as if left unattended the copper firebox plate would have become overheated with only solid immovable scale deposits behind it instead of water, and become distorted, scrapped or worse. So in a way we feel that the cloud of having to attend to the boiler so early on has had a silver lining in finding this problem before it became serious.

This re-working of 2857’s boiler on 2857 is unheard of on any other in the Railway’s history, especially so early in a boiler’s life, and at this stage no-one is trying to apportion blame. Ian Walker stresses to all of us doing the boiler work that the problems on the boiler were in no way a reflection on the skills and abilities of those involved. All our volunteer work was supervised by the SVR, while all boilers have to pass hydraulic and steam tests before fitting to the frames and this boiler passed those with flying colours. It has been suggested that the rigours of varying pressure cooling and heating, vibration and so on soon showed up the weaknesses that won’t show on static tests, but then again the same rigours would be present on every other boiler sent out by the boiler shop, yet without showing the same levels of trouble. It appears that the SVR had a number of issues around the time of this overhaul which have since been dealt with by appropriate corrective actions.

Our boiler ‘left the building’ on Monday 2nd July 2012 and was placed on the brown GRC&W ‘Warwell’ wagon used for steam testing outside. There was no requirement from the SVR’s current insurers, Allianz, for repeats of the hydraulic tests etc, so the idea was to boil her for a few days before pressure testing the recent works. It was then planned to return the boiler to the chassis possibly the following week, although this may depend on the Allianz normal annual exam due, ominously for the superstitious, on Friday 13th July, this being the earliest date the surveyor could attend. It was suggested that while the boiler was out of the frames it would make sense to start again with the 10-year certificate, but Duncan advised that we would not get a new 10 yearly without removal of boiler tubes, and a full hydraulic to 275psi again. With that, plus all the smokebox furniture & fittings to remove it wouldn’t be easy, and as it stands we have lost only about 5 months of the certificate. This examination was passed successfully. After the successful steam test Duncan and his team got the boiler back in the frames on the following Thursday, 19th July 2012 and the loco re-entered traffic on Friday 3rd August.