'OUTSIDE' Jobs
Occasional repair or overhaul jobs come our way, such as this lovely little boiler and Stuart Turner No 4 vertical engine which had been seized solid and required a serious cylinder job and some re arrangement of its bearing brasses before it would run freely.
This lovely little freelance reversing horizontal was made from all sorts of materials during the war and is now resident with its makers grandson, it had never run on steam and had aquired fractured upper crosshead guidebar mountings at some time during its life, following a little TLC at Phoenix Works it was connected to a boiler and steamed for the first time, hooked up to a small dynamo and run under load for several hours to reveal and iron out any other little faults, following re timing of both valve eccentrics and re setting of the slide valve, remaking the steam chest gaskets it ran in either direction, under load, like a little sewing machine.
'Emily' was christened a few minutes into the steaming , here her owner, Guy, took a crash course on the rudiments of running an engine under steam. After a couple of gallons of water and several celebratory pints of beer had been boiled away, aquiring a boiler to run her at home was being discussed as they left for home some five hours later !
Richard, the slightly inebriated Welsh gentleman sitting so irreverently on the Dodman, while at the Auction where Riches & Watts # 2 was purchased, is not (currently) a steam engine owner and therefore by definition 'normal' and not eccentric. Instead, he has a set of miniature but fully working church bells which he keeps in either his house or during fine weather, garden !