Hi,

This entry is split in Day 3 and 4, due to me going to my club last night and not being able to write my entry for yesterday:

Day 3:

Right half way through my first week and loving every minute of it! My Third day was as follows:

Got to the Depot around 7:40, went to get my tag (a tag is hung on the 'not to be moved' board on unit and tells everybody who is working on the unit) and went to see who was I working with. First we went to get a Class 168/0, No. 168002, ready for a move between F road and C Road. Once this was completed, we went to the mess room to await our fitter.

Once we knew who our fitter was, we went over to C road to work on the North Middle car of 168002. We started by taking the injector covers off the engine to check the engine injector clearances. Once this was done we changed the centrifuge oil filter and engine oil filter. We then moved on to take oil samples from the Master and Slave final drives (the Master being the one closest to the engine and the slave being the one furthest away from the engine). We then took Fuel and Coolant samples from the car.

After a bit of lunch, we went back to the unit to change the fuel filter and fill her up with Hydrostatic oil. After this we tested the brake pad clearances. We then started her up to see how she ran, then clocked off for the day

Day 4:

The day started off as normal, got on train, went to depot, went out to started work. I was working on the South Driving car Class 168/1, No. 168111. We started by Dropping the oil from the engine. We then had to change engine oil filter, this involved me releasing the bolt from the drain on the filter, this resulted in my right hand (place a small spot on my face) being drenched in oil, which I don't mind, luckly I was wearing gloves, so it wasn't that bad!

We then took oil samples from the final drives, then locked then using locking wire. The purpose of locking wire is to stop the nuts of the final drive coming off, which if they did would mean the oil from the final drive would come out and sieze the final drives (which caused a serious derailment of a EMT Meridian Class 222 at Kibworth, where the final drive seized and split the axle in half at 100mph,see here: http://news.bbc.co.u...ire/8526734.stm)

We then measured the wheel diameter on the bogies of our car. This involved takeing the measurments of the flange depth & height and the rim width. THis was then converted into wheel diameter by use of a table. The railway uses several different tolerances for wheel diameters:

• Wheels across an axle can have a diameter variation of no more than 1.5mm
• Wheels in a motor bogie can have a diameter variation of no more than 1.5mm
• Wheels in a trailing bogie can have a diameter variation of no more than 13.0mm

After a spot of lunch, our unit was moved from B road to A road. Once this was complete we tested the AWS and TPWS. We then moved onto a gangway check, a gangway check consists of lifting the gangway floor and checking for rips or tears in the gangway and removing anyleaves that have accumulated as well as checking the inner coupling bars. We finished the day off with a few brake tests

Simon