A bit more progress under the Box

Tuesday 10th May
Luckily we were out of the rain today in the Locking Room of Broadway box making further progress with the mechanical locking and drilling of the floor girders for mounting the signal wire wheels and point operating angle cranks.

Here's Malcolm mounting one of the frames to the locking tray. These will retain the tappet blades (the vertical notched bars) and (eventually) the horizontal locking bars. A bit of a fiddle to fit, but again the 4 vertical and 2 horizontal pieces in each of 5 units had been match-marked (well most of them!) previously at Winchcombe. Some of these pieces needed de-rusting before fitting,
John and Martin (making one of his visits to the railway from Wolverhampton) set about drilling some more holes for the angle cranks in the floor mounted girders using the very handy magnetic base drill. These moles are clearance for 20mm dial bolts (sorry not quite heritage here - probably originally 3/4"BSW!) :

Here are some of the holes:

And here are the angle cranks fitted

The angle cranks will connect to the lever tails above with long rods , you can just see one in the left of the picture showing the drilled holes above. This was hung from a lever to set the horizontal position of  the crank. Unfortunately, the connecting rods are not the correct length for this installation and will need shortening . Each end has a fork to take a pivot pin, so a section will be cut out of the centre and then the two parts welded back together.

A bit more drilling and fitting left for another day.

S&T Dept are off to the West Somerset this Saturday for a reciprocal visit at the invitation of their S&T to have a guided tour of their signal boxes, etc. An early start to be at  Bishops Lydeard for 09.00hrs !

Curly