122 – Chasewater Railway Museum Bits & Pieces From Chasewater News December 1989 – 3

122 – Chasewater Railway Museum Bits & Pieces

From Chasewater News December 1989 – 3

A Tale of Toad – Part 1 – I.Newbold

Following the arrival of this Fowler 0-4-0 Diesel-Hydraulic locomotive, two problem areas were identified.  The first was the reason for its withdrawal from commercial use; the coolant pump had expired and circulated most of the cooling water straight out onto the track.  Also the starting batteries (all four of them) had decayed during the loco’s period of inactivity.

Having removed the water pump and taken it to work, it was duly dismantled, in my own time of course, and it was only then that its reason for failing became apparent.  The sump had obviously been apart before, probably for the same reason, but unfortunately it had been put back together wrongly.  The rotating carbon seal had had its fixed running face installed back to front, and the seal which had been fitted had the wrong diameter lip for the water pump’s shaft. This meant that water could get past the seal into the bearing housing.  Now this might not have been so serious as this sort of seal usually tends to allow a very small amount of fluid past as a lubricant for the rubber faces, and the bearing housing has a drain hole in its face to allow this to escape.  Unfortunately the bearing housing had been put on upside down so the drain hole was at the top so the bearings had been immersed in water and had also expired.

Fortunately at this time a rep for the carbon-faced seal suppliers paid us a visit at work and was hi-jacked for a while.  He supplied a data sheet giving seal/shaft dimension correlations.  Armed with this information the seal face was fitted correctly, a collar turned down to fit on the shaft for the seal lip to sit against, and some new bearings found.  The water pump was then re-fitted three times before the gasket face with the cylinder block could be persuaded to seal.  Two of these occasions were in the rain and, although there is a fair amount of room under the hood, you invariably end up with water running down your neck on various occasions.  By this point I had become convinced of the advantage of air-cooled engines!

The loco then served a useful spell of duty requiring only a split air-hose to be removed.

As the months passed, the batteries became more of a problem and a blowing noise started to be heard from under the hood.  Investigation revealed the cause to be a blow from No.1 or No.2 cylinder.  This engine, in common with many automotive diesel (or more correctly oil) engines has a single piece six-cylinder block with a pair of three cylinder heads fitted.  As the blow was from the cylinder to the outside rather than into the oil or water systems, the loco could still be used with care if required.  A new set of four six-volt batteries were fitted, courtesy of the kind auspices of the loco’s major owners, Andy Cavelot.

Now the fun really started, as any of you have ever messed around with older cars, through interest or necessity, will know that getting hold of the technical manuals is a major part of the battle.  The information that came with the loco appears to have made a successful escape bid (if anyone out there knows where it is please could we have it back, even now) and Halford’s didn’t seem to stock a Haynes manual for a Fowler 0-4-0diesel hydraulic loco, so we had a problem.  The engine fitted to ‘Toad’ is a Leyland 900 series vertical lorry engine, so I started by ringing the Leyland dealer who contract services our works vans.  He revealed tat the head gasket sets could still be obtained, at a price, but he did not have a manual on these engines, in fact only one of their staff could ever remember seeing one.  He did, however, suggest that I try ringing Leyland or B.R.E.L. at Derby.  Thinking logically for a change, I decided to start with Leyland.