Margaret in the Wars

75th Anniversary

Six days and counting down to our 75th anniversary of the railway in Strathaven park. Next Tuesday will also be the birthday of Margaret, our 2-6-0 steam locomotive

But – OH NO!!!! essential repairs, limited time to do it

🏃🏻‍♂️ The Race is On !🏃🏻‍♀️

Margaret, our birthday girl next week, needs urgent work to be ready for the big day

While testing her last week it was discovered that the packing material in both of her cylinders / pistons had reached the end of its useful life.

This means stripping a large part of the locomotive’s motion and pulling out the pistons to repack them with Graphite square rope (5×5 mm).
We now await in trepidation for the rope to be arrive by mail.

Hopefully this will arrive in time to let us complete both the repacking and testing before the big day.
Fingers crossed and everything else crossed too !!!!!

Stripping the loco down took four hours and it will take roughly the same to reassemble everything.
A big thank you to Jim L who is leading this work

From all the nervous folk (and other locos) at the Wee Train