Re: R711's First Mainline Test Run

[Craig Haber <albatross@harnessnet.com.au>]

G'day,

Yuri J Sos/Melbourne AUS wrote:
<snip>

Well we had another go today with a little more success...

A healthy crowd were in attendance when I arrived at Ballarat around
1030am, the R was in steam, T369 hard at work shunting (had to re-arrange
the carriages for the test train), the R ran up and down the yard a couple
of times and was turned, but again the valves gave cause for concern.

The fireman's side valve was disassembled and required some modification.
The scheduled trip to Newport was cancelled, instead at around 4PM
(needless to say, only the 'stayers' in the crowd remained!) she left the
depot for a trip to Warrenheip (using the Geelong line), with T369.  The
MU operation seems to work OK - at the moment there's no control of
dynamic brake, but this requires only a little more work and will happen.
The drivers side valve again proved a problem, so the plan when I left at
around 6pm was:

modify drivers side valve as per firemans side
run loco up and down yard for some of the night
depart Ballarat at 8am and go via Bacchus Marsh, Sunshine, Brooklyn and
Newport to be weighed at Newport on Wednesday.

711 certainly looks "a million dollars" in it's new paint job, and it's
deep throaty whistle is magnificent!

Cheers,
CH.