North Eastern Locomotive Preservation Group

An early start to today's working party. With the crane in position, the cab was lidted and placed on a rail trolley.

The J27’s boiler was successfully lifted at LNWR Crewe on Wednesday 17th May for the trial fitting of its ashpan.

Today we have been machining new fitted bolts for the slide bars. These were bought in as blanks with the fitted diameter rough turned and the thread finished.

We also did some painting of the new tender tank, bolted the tank down to the frames, tapped out the water flange holes and measured up for the studs for the water flanges.

Chris Lawson and myself visited Crewe on Wednesday.

Good progress is now being made with the J27 boiler overhaul at LNWR heritage at Crewe with completion still forecast for the end of March. The accompanying photographs taken on 15th February show the boiler retubing and various backhead, foundation ring and mudhole door refurbishments nearing completion.

A complete new smokebox will be provided. The existing chimney will be reused but fitted with a new petticoat and steel lining. Coincidentally the new smokebox door arrived on site the same day. The main steam pipe requires expanding within the front tubeplate and this awaits the delivery of a new tool for its completion.

On a cold grey miserable day the new tender tank arrived at Hopetown and was parked up next to the line by the crossing.

The day had started a few hours earlier earlier in Middlesbrough with the loading of the newly painted tender at Dockside Industrial Services.

Then the action moved to Hopetown.

Some photographs taken at Dockside Industrial Services on Friday.

Adam Dalgliesh has completed fabrication of the tender tank. Today it was pulled from his fab shop and loaded onto a lorry to be taken for blasting, priming and to have a heavy duty paint coat applied to the sump and baseplate.