A tradition has begun to emerge, quite by accident, of starting the year with a celebration of somebody else's bus, and an RT, to boot! After a long period of alternative activity leading up to the new year, I eventually got a day pass to the Wrexham and Chester New Year Running Day. There were a large number of vehicles to choose from, many of them rather modern, but well patronised and a good variety of rides. Sadly, my attempt to catch up with temporary Hooton-resident RF539 was scuppered by failed doors on a 158 Super Sprinter heading to Birmingham via Wrexham. We did manage to catch a run out to Llangollen on RT 4548, which was most enjoyable and very atmospheric by virtue of steamed-up windows and moderate to heavy rain for much of the journey. Our young conductor was immaculately presented in Green Line uniform that did not match the red bus - but even that has its prototype in busy summer weekends with relief buses from anywhere that would lend them! It was most amusing to find a good few familiar faces among the throng, not all of them bus-nuts. The return to Deganwy went exactly as planned with a long-overdue run along the Borderlands Line from Wrexham Central and a perfect 11-minute change onto the coast line at Shotton. I am still weighing-up the fact that our train was not a class 230 conversion, and wondering whether I should have celebrated the 197 or bemoaned the lost opportunity to savour novel traction!

RT4548 endures rainy Llangollen, but manages to shine. Photo © J.Wilkins

Not a bus, but Gardner 6LXB powered through SCG transmission! Photo © J.Wilkins

Now that my spell as professional decorator and Mr. Fixit has wound-down, I am looking forward to warmer days and a resumption of meaningful progress with SM106, but polar air makes the bus garage uninhabitable in mid-winter. Working visits (bashes, for the purist) to the Ffestiniog Railway have therefore been the most remarkable events recently. Public trains do not run after New Year, so the usual entertainment was missing, but engineers' trains can and do run occasionally and Minffordd is second only to Boston Lodge in this regard. The photo shows Upnor Castle awaiting the right-away to the Port after climbing from Minffordd yard with a single wagon (and emitting a very satisfying Gardner grumble). I love that radiator cover!

The first substantive session of the new year started cold (ambient temperature 5°C), wet and dark, but ended on something of a high. Initially I was unsure where to start, as the momentum of last year had dissipated, but decided to get underneath and test some air pipes, not least because the installation of the brake foot-valve was unproven. The washing-machine hose was attached to the front brakes supply line and the generator fired-up to run the portable compressor, and before too long the pressure was up and the compressor cut out. A gentle hiss could then be heard under the cab floor. Fortunately it was quickly reduced by tightening the compression joint at the back of the valve assembly, after which pressing the pedal caused a gentle sigh and familiar hiss on release. So far so good. An earlier attempt to jack the offside brake drum off had failed, so that was the next task. Unwinding the slack-adjuster gave a curious result: first relaxing the shoes, but then tightening them again. I surmised that something had stuck. The front drums have only two jacking screws, so there is no way of ensuring a straight release. Despite backing-off the shoes, it seemed that they were still sticking, and persuasion with a club hammer and lump of hardwood was ineffective. More or less accidentally I found that a full brake application put everything straight, so slowly the crack of 'daylight' around the hub widened - albeit at the cost of running around the bus to press the brake pedal each time. Eventually, everything suddenly went slack and the drum almost dropped off into my lap. "Tidy", as Nessa was prone to say, and lunch was called. After lunch I dared to look at the scene I had uncovered: the linings had good thickness and the drums were hardly scored, though the dust, rust, cobwebs and obvious lack of lubrication and attention around the camshaft and rollers were troubling. I'd had enough on the floor and in the dark, so went to the engine and removed the wonky lubricator on the water pump ready to replace it with the pukka item from the pump which Mike Lloyd had given me as a present many, many years ago. Soon installed, and given six pumps of grease to settle it in! I also removed the top cover from the Plessey hydraulic pump, to see if I could understand the oil leak which manifests every time the engine is started (despite the system being nominally empty). Very tricky-looking oil seals around the pump gears persuaded me that an expert might be required to adjudicate on that case, but it was getting late and distinctly dark and I was cold and went home.

Inside the offside drum, as found..... Photo © J.Wilkins

.....and sans shoes, after some cleaning-up. Photo © J.Wilkins

A better, brighter day was spent disassembling the brake shoes and cleaning-up, once I had worked out how to unhook the retaining spring! It never seemed to be a problem on the rear hubs, but that was so long ago I don't remember the details. In the end I realised that a long, slim rod could be passed through from the hinge-end to lever upwards the cranked end of the upper spring. No sign whatever of the access holes in the shoe which are described in the manual. The lower shoe was (predictably) more difficult due to generally muckier, rustier conditions. Even seeing the bits that needed tweaking was difficult! However it gave in after a good defence, and lunch was taken. After lunch the nuts were taken off the pivots and the shoes labelled and removed. The bushes looked good and there was minimal play. Thereafter it was a matter of wire-brushing and/or cleaning with degreaser on a paintbrush, and by the end of the afternoon it all looked quite civilised. Some while will elapse before temperatures rise to a suitable level for painting, which will give time for the solvents to evaporate. A curious observation on the drum, while I was cleaning it up, was the 'dual score' which indicates that it has been used previously with wider (rear) shoes. My guess is that they are from a Routemaster rear axle! Corrections on a postcard, please.

The next session saw the disassembly of the roller mechanism at the cam-end of the shoes and the surprising discovery that the rollers were not of the same diameter! One of the roller-pivots required some (moderate) heat from my camping-gas stove to let go, but it was a useful hand-warmer a bit later. A fit of "what next?" led to the application of the nearside "bonnet number" and then another dive underneath to start the commissioning of more air piping. First was the rear brake circuit through the foot-valve to the relay-valve, but my naive impression that the control pressure would build up when no supply pressure was applied was proven to be incorrect. Pressure just leaked to the actuator side! It proved that the foot-valve was working better than before it was re-manufactured, which was heartening. It also showed that there was no alternative to rehabilitating the main air reservoirs, and the obvious connection was out-of-bounds because it was one of the troublesome joints that were rusted solid. Nothing for it but to pipe up the unloader valve, which was brand-new but untested. That all took longer than typing this account, and the joints were not particularly air-tight, but by degrees it all started to come together and the portable compressor managed about 80psi, which was 80psi more than the reservoir had seen since the '90s. It was very odd listening to the sound effects of air passing through the non-return valves, but there was no proof that they functioned properly. It was also heartening to see pressure registering on the (non-LT) duplex gauge in the cab. The ultimate reward was a huge blast of air from the relay valve when I put the pedal down, which was a great result and a sign that it was time to pack up and go home and warm-up in front of our stove.

Fed-up with cold floors and crawling about, the next session addressed the long-standing issue of sidelights. Hands up if you thought they were already attached and functional? 'Fraid not so, because I could not bear to attack the shiny front dash. Holes were avoided to make painting more reliable, so I had to break that taboo. In the stores I have the pattern that Ian Barrett used to recreate the panel below the windscreen, where it curves at the corners. It is in red primer and has the legend DM009, and can be used as either off- or near-side because the punched aperture is in the middle. Clever PRV! Only the rivet-nuts make it 'handed' because there are two sets of holes for fixing the lamp cans. Funny thing is, from DMS168 onwards, the headlamps moved to the side panels and the sidelights were moved upwards - so that pattern is a real antique. The aperture has a surrounding set of six holes, three for fixing the can in place, and three larger ones are clearance size for the rivet-nuts that secure the chromed bezel. First job was orientating the can and drilling the rivet holes, using skin-pins to hold it in place, then putting a slim drill through the rivet-nuts to locate their larger, clearance holes. The cans have been painted to preserve them, and the inside is reflective white but the flange does not show anyway; it was just easier to put white on everything except the back! That bit was straightforward, and successful as the skin-pins testify. Opening out the clearance holes was unpleasant and required some individual fettling because the rivet-nuts were not as regular as I had hoped, but all was well in the end. The electrical socket was dismounted to make room for the wiring and grommet to be manipulated into place and the can rivetted home. It proved necessary to do that because the grommet makes the can too wide to fit through the aperture. "So it goes", as Kurt would say. The wiring was cleaned-up and terminated and the socket re-attached. Lunch time! The nearside can was a more or less identical repeat, except that during the fettling I slipped with the rat-tail file and scratched my paintwork. I'm not sure quite what Kurt would have said, but "FUNGUS" was probably a close approximation. Then the grommet disintegrated due to perished rubber. Eventually all was well and I cleaned out the rivet-nuts with a 2BA tap and fitted some clean lenses, just for show, without the rubber gaskets which have become non-existent or shiny tarmac in every example I have from my collection. Which includes only one bona-fide 30V, 6W bulb. Definitely time to call it a day! Next time I was at the garage the temperature was 3°C, but the sun was shining so I worked up a decent heat by doing grounds maintenance tasks, but a short time spent on the floor looking at the front road springs adjustments was purgatorial.

Drilling the dash for the sidelight fixings. Photo © J.Wilkins

Displaying a rear route-number blind at last! Photo © J.Wilkins

A number of cold, dark sessions have been put in without any major outcomes, but every little helps and I don't want to let the job go off the boil. So, in no particular order: the front road-springs have been fettled and pinned, the offside garage running-number plate has been attached, balcony-floor repairs initiated, the water-pump hose elbow has been removed and sidelight illumination procured and the bus tidied somewhat. A new spring-pin clamp-bolt has been fashioned from a half-inch UNF bolt, relieving the hex-head so that it drops onto the machined face of the forward bracket, and new Nyloc nuts applied to both bolts. Once again I have been swotting-up on the adjustment procedure for the front springs, and it still makes no sense. However I did what it said and could find no play to adjust, except on the hanger. The procedure has been followed and the adjustment nuts backed-off slightly, so there is nothing left to do. The running-number plate proved to be a difficult task involving drilling out the remains of former fixings from the upper row of screws whose locations are given away by legacy holes in the body. The lower row of screws have no visible locations because the panel has been replaced, and I have to trust work done by Ian Barrett - whereas I knew that the wooden fixing plate was in place on the nearside under the panel that I fitted. I still find it stressful to drill holes in the pristine body! Three of the upper holes (4-off) appeared to contain rusted screws, but after attention from my diamond drill I was able to get through cleanly and dowel the holes. Once the plate was located, the lower holes were easy to pop and drill, and miraculously I found a solid foundation to set the screws into, so that went well in the end. The ramp to the upper seating will be laminated with 3mm plywood beneath 3mm Treadmaster, and the areas below and above the differential trapdoor now have their plywood cut awaiting a warmer day for contact adhesive application. It's a lovely job cutting to size with a knife, rather than a saw! The campaign of replacing old water hose in the radiator circuit has continued, and a 45mm elbow sourced (it arrived at home while I was at the bus) and will fit easily (he says confidently) in place of a plain hose that had kinked badly, constricting the water flow. RF-technology sidelights are to be replaced (reversibly) with modern 5 Watt wedge bulbs and holder, which are cheap and easily available (Durite) unlike B22D, 30V, 6W bulbs. It just needs a new bracket to hold the push-in socket in the correct location. The tidy-up was down to expecting long-awaited visitors from south of the Thames, who arrived bearing a pair of K/L-type blind rollers as a gift. It was a rare pleasure to be able to talk at length about the minutae of single and double-deck London Transport buses by Park Royal, and share information on resources. It was particularly gratifying to hear that the die for extruding PRV weatherstrip has been put to good use in its new home at Bradford Rubber Services, and discuss applications for the many pairs of door-nosing which I have in stock. Not long after their departure I was able to wind-round to the hallowed number 418 and marvel in the transformation of the rear of the bus. I also spent an hour dismantling my recalcitrant grounds mower, but you don't want to hear about that, and neither did I, in truth. "So it goes".

Rusty can with prototype bulb-holder bracket and original. Photo © J.Wilkins

Red primer on the hub and brake area. Photo © J.Wilkins

A rainy day put me off a trip to the bus, so I stayed at home to prototype a bracket for mounting my new bulb-holders, which have rubber bodies and press into a ½" diameter hole. The only complication is that the hole should be in a thick material, about ¼" which suggested a bit of fabrication. Better to fold it up in one piece, I reckoned, so it was off to North Wales Engineering for some steel sheet offcuts to act as formers for the bends. Experiment proved that wrapping 1.2mm aluminium around 3mm steel gave a good fit. Holes had to be drilled for the bulb-holder and fixing screws. On the rusted remains of my 'decent' sidelight can the only good bits were the (brass) captive nuts and socket bracket, so I had a pattern to work from. Within an afternoon I had the prototype for a replacement bracket, which can be rolled-out in quantity as required and fitted to the bus in the cans so generously donated some while ago. Now the rubber gasket problem has gone further up in the pecking-order! In other recent news (during various weathers), we have seen the production-run of bulb-holders roughed out, the fitting of the water-pump inlet hose, measurements for new woodwork in the trapdoor apertures, gluing the plywood down on the upstairs ramp and (if you will believe it) a final wire-brushing and cleaning of the offside front hub area prior to the application of the season's first paint in-situ. A taste of Spring has come to the Conwy Valley, bringing sun, daffodils, young lambs and paint!

Plywood fitted to make up the thickness for Treadmaster. Photo © J.Wilkins

Hunslet Velinheli on the Megabash works train. Photo © J.Wilkins

My tin of EvoStik was more than half depleted, which means that I need more for the Treadmaster and I am averse to buying again from a company that almost rhymes with Grand Prix. It was an expedient diversion en-route to the bus, but I was reminded of their pedantic ways only AFTER the fact, and will not be going there again! Meanwhile, there has been a great deal of silence regarding progress on the bus. That relates to several factors: a short holiday in Pembrokeshire, deterrent cold weather, work parties on the Ffestiniog Railway and the things that did happen being unremarkable at the time. Efforts have started to come together in a number of areas, and the weather has become tolerable at last! So, in no particular order, here is an update. The production run of sidelight bulb-holders were completed, fitted and wired-up. The cheerful glow on pulling the big switch in the cab was very pleasing, so now we have to think about gaskets for the lenses. A replacement for the shockingly rusted REVERSING light-box was donated by Nigel Adams (Three Counties Bus Museum) several years ago, and I hope that he sees that it has been fitted at long last. Four mounting holes were drilled for 2BA screws and two ½" clearance holes for the bezel clamp. The wiring was interesting and needed some thought, experiment and improvisation before success was obtained, due to an absence of any diagram and the depleted length of the remaining wires. A brand new reversing lamp dish (in PRV pink primer) has been taken from inherited old stock and attached 'lightly', and paired with an unused replacement lamp unit. Some of the stuff that my predecessors found is almost unbelievable! Fortunately neither positive nor negative wires appeared to have been damaged in the rear-lamps conduit and the testing had a surprise spin-off result as well. I have also been searching for the nearside driving mirror as its bracket has been added to the queue for green paint when it is available, and happened across a spare EXIT ONLY box with a full complement of (very rare) bulbs. As there are no batteries on board at present, testing the reversing lights required the generator to be fired-up, and I was minded to look at the EXIT ONLY box wiring, copy it and pop a new-found bulb in. Power and S & T switch on, doors manually (no air supply available) opened and closed: nothing, nor any glimmer from the step-well lights which are on the same circuit. Working blind, without my retrospective wiring schematic, I started to probe along the tag strips on the door-control relay board because I knew that one pair of contacts are shorted when the doors are open. During that process a weird thing happened as I pushed with my meter probe: one of the relays clicked! Definitely a no-no! A bit of prodding with a finger found the culprit, where two wires were 'fitted' to one terminal and neither actually made contact. From the dry, corroded look of the bare, twisted wire they had been like that for a very long time. Freshly stripped and terminated there was no difference apart from a lack of spurious relay-clicking, which made me feel rather disappointed. However, in order to check if anything else had changed I pressed OPEN and CLOSE for both doors a few times, and was shocked to see EXIT ONLY light up from the corner of my eye! I realised that the light was powered from the door controls, rather than passively from the door-open microswitch (as is the case with the driver's tell-tale lamps). Game on! With a bit of tweaking I was able to get the exit step-well lamp to light, which was no mean feat considering the treatment received by the bulb. A bulb from the reversing light-box was fitted to the front step-well, and that too worked fine. I realised that the improvised red wire that I had removed partly while rebuilding the exit step was obviously to link both step-well lights and overcome the error I had uncovered on the relay board, so I was able to coil-up and discard 5 metres of red bodge with great satisfaction. A coat of chassis silver has been applied to the o/s front wheel hub area, and the brake drum cleaned off with a cup-brush in my angle-grinder and given a coat of rust-converter. The shoes are back in, and a chat with Brakehouse, Perivale confirmed that pivot-pin bushes are no longer available, but I should not worry unless the fit is disastrously sloppy. A fresh supply of split-pins are required to complete the shoes installation. Given that the springs are now done, the jack was used to lift the axle onto a stand on the offside, and remove the nearside wheel and put that side on a stand too, so the chassis is level and all the weight is on the springs again. That sounded quick and easy, but it wasn't. The wheels need a repaint, which is looking credible with the warmer weather. All in all the month is coming to an end a great deal better than it started.

Cleaning up the offside brake drum. Photo © J.Wilkins

Primer on the hub and shoes in place. Photo © J.Wilkins

The first day of Summer Time was about as amenable as a person could wish for, so good work and happy times flowed! The first job was to apply some of my newly-replenished supply of split-pins to the brake-shoe rollers in preparation for hooking the return springs in place. That turned out to be a job where practice makes perfect, and a long fiddle turns out to be an almost instant snap into place when you get it right. The art is to place the end of the slim bar in the middle of the spring, rather than at its end, and then the retaining pin isn't blocked by the bar and the end of the spring goes properly into the channel of the shoe. With the shoes in place I could set the split-pins on the nuts of the pivot pins with some confidence and apply a light smear of molybdenum grease on the cam faces. If the hub was ready for paint I would have been able to fit the drum, but it wasn't. With the bearing cap absent I needed to apply a dust cover over the hub securing nut and outer bearing, which was improvised from wide masking tape. Then the gasket was carefully prised off and as much paint and filth removed as I could manage with my usual chisel before applying the trusty Black & Decker with various wire-brush attachments. De-greaser and finally paraffin were used to mop up any greasy residua which were wiped off with paper towel and left to dry. Moving to the nearside I had to dismantle the slack-adjuster and back-off the s-cam in order to give the drum a clear ride to freedom. An unpleasant, greasy and dirty process made more difficult by everything being seized and reluctant to let go. Eventually it was achieved, and I had a go with a pair of bolts to jack-off the drum. Foolish boy! After a bit I called a truce and went back to put primer on the o/s hub before packing-up and going home. "So it goes".

Rubbed down and primer applied to the front wheel rims. Photo © J.Wilkins

The woeful state of the nearside front hub area. Photo © J.Wilkins

The day of the next visit started with a trip to the dentist, so it came together a bit later than usual, but it was a single-purpose mission: Lincoln Green on those front wheel rims. I thought about the task as I drove down the valley (jaw aching somewhat) and realised that the end of the task would see ALL my 'dress' rims in good, painted condition. That made me feel better. The next, pleasant surprise was that my green paint stock had survived the winter well, about 80% full and no skin to speak of. Soon done stirring and thinning, then onto the rims. Perfect weather, a bit cooler and ideal for work indoors. After the first rim it was time for lunch, then onto the second. Wheel rims are not a nice painting job, very fiddly what with all the stud-holes, hand-holes, valve_stem holes and of course the clearance holes for the bolt-heads (used on rear drums only). Worse still is the outer face which has the outset neatly blocking hasty attempts at applying paint to the groove in the rolled edge. An interesting feature, and one that distinguishes Swift rims from the similar Merlin rim - thanks Chris (Sullivan). I'm no tyre fitter, but it seems to be very easy to fit the casings to these rims. Another conversation to have one day. A special feature of the day were 'noises off' from a Gardner-engined ERF wagon, and its companion Ruston & Hornsby VC4, 120hp stationary engine built 1926. Pure magic (except it wasn't a Sulzer 6LDA). It was only mid-afternoon by the time I had finished putting green onto the hub face, so I decided to have another attempt at the nearside drum, and try to understand why I couldn't back off the shoes as expected. Well, I did my best and again applied pressure to the jacking bolts, without obvious effect. The time had come for a good braying (carefully calibrated and applied, of course) as they say in Yorkshire. My lump-hammer and a hardwood dolly was used progressively around the rim, starting by the jacking screws. Something began to give, because the drum started to bind on the shoes, just as with the offside drum. Progressive jacking and braying prevailed after several circuits, and (just as with the other side) the drum suddenly went limp and dropped onto the studs. Time for tidying and away!

Things became complicated in April, and the weather became insanely hot from time to time (inside the garage, anyway) so there was not as much progress as I would have liked. The clean-up of the nearside brake-drum proceeded quickly, and a start was made on cleaning out the muck from the hub area. Why there should be a thick festoon of cobweb was a mystery. Attention was also paid to the lamps on the rear end, and putting the new brake and indicator wires into sleeving.

The filthy nearside brake drum was cleaned up with a wire brush in my angle grinder, and given a coat of rust converter paint for cosmetic purposes, while the cleanup of the hub area was commenced. Why there should be thick festoons of cobwebs, I cannot say. It seems a poor place for spiders to live, but I am not a spider. Issues around the chassis lubrication pipes were examined, and a general paucity of oil noted, which was a little worrying as they feed the king-pin and track-rod ball-joint. A start was made on wire-brushing the hub area and looking at the brake shoes and cam rollers, which were basically fine but rusty and dry and not seized. The offside drum was fitted after a bit of paint removal from the studs, and I remembered that I had previously used a suitable size of ring spanner as a spacer for using wheel nuts to draw the drum into place. I forgot to paint the hubcap, and it will now have to wait for the next painting session! For light relief I made a new neoprene foam gasket for the 'REVERSING' stencil-box, which also requires another clamping screw. When I have worked-out what thread size it should be, I will try to machine one from a bit of brass. The original is chromium-plated, of course. The other reason why progress has slowed is that we have a new recruit at home, a springer spaniel puppy at 14 weeks old, so he has needed full-time attention to get him settled in his new life. And then, of course, the Llandudno Transport Festival came around again. The dry, sunny weather of late was a real boon for hard ground conditions, and everybody had a great time in continuous sunshine. It was a great opportunity to meet all the exhibitors and reassemble the scratch team of drivers, conductors and inspectors for the shuttle buses. Both road runs went ahead as expected and a great time was had by all, including yours truly who was invited to have a short turn at the wheel of a visiting RF. How amazing that the image synchronised perfectly with a shop-front advert starting to spell-out my name! The sad thing was that SM106 did not appear in the throng again, but that day is truly much closer now.

Offside brake drum back in place, looking tidy. Photo © J.Wilkins

Transport of delight - an immaculate RF - and full PPE Photo © K.Valla