June 01st, 2015

​During June, Work carried on, unfortunately as we progressed it was found that the rot in the underlying timbers was much worse than we originally thought so it was decided that the whole of the bodywork and deck from the back of the cab rearward would probably need replacing. Fortunately the metal coverings are not damaged and will be re-useable. The photos will give some idea of the state of the wood we found. Much of this crumbled as we started to remove the fixings, although having said that there were several rusted and stubborn bolts that took some effort to move and in a few cases we were forced to take a hacksaw to them

On a brighter note, the last of the new lenses and surrounds were fitted and we finally located the correct fuse and had the refurbished indicators working

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The head gear and monitor situation is nearly resolved.
The head gear has now been stripped down and Colin has obtained some metal of the correct sizes to remake the missing half. The mounting arm is now complete and he just need to find a way to bend ¼” steel plate to make support for the pulley rod. Below is a picture of the set up on a similar appliance registration number CBY 1,
It will be necessary to make up a pattern to cast the brass connector to join the monitor to the mounting and make up the pulley and “red brushes” and this will be ready to be fitted to the ladders once they have been refurbished and repainted.

Additional information from Colin:The way the rescue line was used in London differed from the rest of the UK. London (as most of you will be aware) had a fixed pulley as part of the head of the ladder, whereas the rest of the UK had a pulley with a snap hook rove onto the rescue line and this was clipped to an eye on the head of the ladder (having done all my TL work in County Brigades this is what I was expecting to find).
A look at CBY 1 at Acton soon sorted this out and I now had an idea of what we needed. Our task however, has been made so much easier  with the very generous donation by Mike Heberd of half of the correct fitting for the head of the ladder, along with 2 monitors, the correct one for 240, but with a broken mounting, and another one from an earlier TL but with the correct mounting tag.
This single donation means we can now definitely achieve our goal of having 240FLM looking absolutely correct once she is completed. Thankyou Mike!