Hi,

Day 7 of my Work Experience was as follows:

Today I was working on the North and South Middle cars of a Class 168/0 No. 168004. We started by replacing on the LED lights on the Oil reserve control panel of the North Middle Car (for more on what the oil reserve control panel does see last entry here: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php/blog/424/entry-3547-work-experience-with-chiltern-railways-day-5-6/). When the engine oil is low, a Red LED on the panel lights up and then flashes to show that oil is pumping into the engine. It was this red LED that we were replacing. We started by cutting the wires and taking out the LED. We then replaced it with a new one and crimped the wire ends together.

We then dumped some of the oil out of the engine and then ran the engine up to check that LED lit up when required, it did so we moved on to our next job, checking the gearbox oil level. It turned out that this was a little too high, so we dumped small amount out of the gearbox.

We then moved to working on the South Middle Car of 004. We did the same as on the North Middle, but changing both a Red and a Green LED. The Green LED lights up to show that the engine is running. We changed these, it was then we discovered that the control box itself was not working, a quick trip to stores found none in stock, so we managed to find a working one from a Class 168 engine that had just been changed.

The Final Job of the day was to fill up the auxiliary and starter batteries on the South Middle Car

Day 8 & 9 coming soon.....

Simon