It was turning into a frustrating morning at the
Preiserling’s loco depot.
Since about 5:00am Bert and Bart had been lighting up
good old 44-690 from cold, and getting her ready for another day’s work.
They had lit the fire and just got to the stage where there was enough
steam to run the blowers when – “Look out” shouted Bert, and a giant, 87 times
over-sized hand appeared out of the blue and plucked loco and tender off the
rails in one big grab. Luckily, the 2 Preiserlings had time to jump clear,
but they were pretty upset about it all the same.
“Damn”, said Bert, “He’s done it again, doesn’t he
trust us?” They had oiled up all the running gear nicely, but apparently the
owner thought they’d made a bit of a hash of it. Next thing the loco was upside
down in a stupendously large cradle, the front bogie was off, a few screws were
removed, and the whole body was lying on the depot floor. Luckily Dave the
driver, hanging upside down, was glued into the cab by the seat of his pants or
things could have turned out very badly indeed. (H & S issue here, and the
callous giant owner didn’t even seem to hear Dave’s shouts of indignation)
There was some very loud (to a Preiserling’s ear)
muttering coming from the owner: “Bloody Preiserlings have over-done it again”
and the fruit of the small people's labour was swept away by a tidal wave of
grease solvent. A single drop from a giant oil can splashed onto the armature
spindle bearings, a bit of tweaking and twanging went on around the brush
springs, and a minute later Bert and Bart were running for their lives again as
the loco crashed back onto the tracks beside them.
“I really wish he wouldn’t do that” muttered Bert as
Bart administered paracetamol to the rather shell-shocked driver, but he did
have to admit that when Dave had recovered sufficiently to get her moving, the
old girl ran very nicely indeed.