Saturday 10 May 2003, Canberra

Saturday 10 May was supposed to be spent preparing 1210 for Sunday's Mother's Day train.

(Small digression - Mothers and train trips?? They don't compute. Make it a restaurant-type lunch trip where Mum doesn't have to prepare it or wash up after and it certainly does compute).

There was 1210 still in its boiler test rig and definitely not looking like it would be operational next day.

With no other of the steam crew around at that stage, it was do something else in the meantime.

Peter Dickson was preparing to attach a large steel H-pattern bracket to wooden framed and bodied side corridor carriage BJ 897.

Bolted onto the bracket is the queen bearing which fits into the king bearing on the bogie to enable the bogie to swivel (I might have the royal family reversed but you will get the idea).

The queen bearing was originally bolted onto a large wooden bolster running across the carriage frame. Over the last hundred or so years, the bolts have enlarged their holes in the wood so that the queen bearing itself has been moving on the wood. Removing the bolts is not possible without dismantling a good deal of the end of the car. This is a heritage vehicle held in our care, so that option would not be allowed. The steel bracket is shaped to take of the fore and aft bogie forces away from the four original bolts altogether and to share the sideways forces over six additional bolts.

The bracket plus queen bearing are quite heavy, so the fork lift was used to carefully raise and position the bracket until first one end and then the other could be temporarily secured. We just wanted it to be safely held in place. The permanent securing with correct nuts and washers would be done during the following week.

BJ 897 was made operational for the Centenary of Federation train. It and BVJ 1457 are used as additional cars for our end platform set on special occasions.

Problems with both bogie bearings were noticed during running and have both now been corrected as shown here.

The other end of the car held the greatest problems because at some time in its railway life it had had an extremely heavy shunt. A steel bracket under the car holding the buffer spring gear had been mangled.

Interestingly, there was no damaged woodwork. The bracket had to be replaced totally rather than being rebuilt.

In addition, both drawgear springs came out in about six pieces each. These have also been replaced.

By now, we knew the problem for 1210. The bottom end plate gasket of the boiler pressure test pump kept failing during the test procedure. The gasket is reinforced rubber about half a centimetre thick. The pressure was distorting the gasket near each of the two water passages leading to the valve chambers of the pump.