At around 9.30 on the morning of 20 August Andy Lee (on ground) and his colleague from R&A Transport are looking very pleased with themselves in photo.1 (courtesy Martyn Hughes, Roach Eng.) having just loaded our freshly machined cylinders plus the old cylinder block on to their lorry at Roach Engineering ready for transport to Williton. The old cylinder block is on the LH end. This had been sent to Roach to act as a pattern along with copies of the relevant ex GWR drawings to ensure that all the necessary machining was undertaken of cylinder faces, piston and valve bores and all holes drilled to size and/or tapped as needed.

This Photo was taken just after 14.00 the same day in Williton Works yard and shows the two new cylinders which had just been delivered on their pallets on the ground with a rather pleased looking Ryan Pope. He did pass the comment that “they’re here and I am very happy.” The next stages will be to fit the new extension frames together with the cylinders into the locomotive’s main frames in the workshop. At present the boiler for 0-6-0T no.1857 is in the way for doing this so priority has had to be given to completing the re-staying of the firebox backhead and checking that all other work has been completed ready for testing to be carried out preparatory to replacing this boiler on that locomotive’s frames.

Meantime, progress has been made with making the new fitted bolts for the horn blocks. These are the guides within which the locomotive coupled wheel axleboxes are located. The first 28 bolts have enabled the final fitting of the left trailing and left driving wheel horn blocks. Photo.3 (maj) at midday on 25 August shows the 2 LH driving wheel horn blocks assembled in the LH frameplate with 7 bolts driven into each block place with nuts on the inside. One of the RH blocks can be seen through the horn awaiting its new bolts to be fitted. It was planned to compete fitting of the LH horn blocks by close of work the same day. On completion of fitting all 6 horn blocks the next stage is to fit the horn stays preparatory to grinding the working faces true to specific dimensions ready for fitting the axleboxes.