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Steam narrow boat President

News from Down the ‘hole - May 2008

by Bob Crompton

The winter’s work continues at a moderate pace with electrical and gas work completed on Kildare, together with, on President, the normal draining, opening up of the manhole and mudholes and cleaning all the gunge and silt from the bottom of the boiler.

When David Stott and I are back from our respective holidays, we will be boxing up the boiler, getting the insurance inspections done and steaming !!! The inspections should be a formality, of course, given last year’s retubing.

On the non-routine side, we have decided to replace the Weir pump which has proven notoriously unreliable over the last few seasons. The Weir has been disconnected and is laying on the engine room floor waiting a lift out with the crane.

To replace it we have acquired a new (to us) banjo style feed pump from Preston Steam which will mount on the cabin wall in a similar position to the Weir but with a smaller footprint. Brian Empsall is kindly performing a complete strip and refurbish of the new pump to give us, hopefully, a number of seasons of trouble-free service.

In addition we have to make some changes to the pipework around the exhaust box (which we installed last year) to avoid an annoying valve operating noise.

Around that time we will need all hands at Working Parties to load coal, clean boats, touch up paint etc. before we go away to East Anglia.

New fenders have been fitted to President which look very smart and a new fridge is being ordered for Kildare.

Looking forward, we have a fairly major programme of work for next winter including, extended dry dock, new forecabin on Kildare, repaint of both boats, blacking of both boats.

This, of course, to make the boats the very best they can be for President’s 100th birthday season.

Please support the Working Parties when they are called, it makes it an awful lot easier when there are pairs of hands to share the load !!
Yours in grime
Bob Crompton

from Steaming Up - May 2008