All five electrical volunteers were in on Sunday, Jonathan, John, Clive, Len and myself, the fire alarm call points were tested out as per usual in the Trackside and BBS concourse, all worked satisfactorily and the results recorded.Clive had been working on the DMU telephones at home rewiring them ready for testing, he brought them in and ran out a length of cable to test out the communication between the two driving cab units and the guards van.
The speech between the two handsets in the driving cabs was OK but the speech in the guards van unit which is a call point without a handset was of a much lower volume.
A small amplifier will be made and tried again in this unit.
We then received a phone call from The Buffers at Rawtenstall to tell us that the fire alarm was sounding and could we attend.
Clive spoke to the people at Rawtenstall to say he would catch the next available train.
The rest of us got out of the ladder store the long stepladders to enable us to remove the lamp heads from the lamp posts on platform three/four at BBS. Simon the full time ELR electrician had asked us previously to replace the fluorescent tubes in the fittings and replace them with LED tubes.
Clive returned on the freight train from Rawtenstall having found that one of the call points had been operated and was latched in, this was released and the unit tested out OK.
We disconnected the power source to all the lamps and removed all five lamp heads, before loading them on to a station trolley and taking them back to our workshop.
Lunch was then taken with birthday cake from the previous week, hence no volunteers in last week.
We managed to strip down three out of the five units ready for rubbing down and repainting next week, they will then be re-wired and fitted with LED tubes and tested.
To stop all the flies and spiders making a home in the lamp heads we have found some rubber strip which will have to be stuck in with contact adhesive.
We finished off with a brew and some birthday cake from Jonathan and myself, more for next week in the fridge.
