As I indicated earlier the Chief on No10 was Bill F. A lovely chap and the Actor he reminds of was Alistair Sim only Bill was more powerfully built, a gentle giant. No10 was a coal fired Scotch Boilerx2 job and as the normal working week was only five days any maintenance problems which required a lot of time to fix were left to the weekend. As Ron M. has indicated on another Forum the T.C.C. was not a generous employer, they weren't a bad employer employees stayed with them for years until they retired. It became clear that the non return/ check valve was leaking on one of the Boilers Feed lines which was directly attached to the boiler front, this meant blowing the boiler down a Sat/ Sunday job and a bit of O/T before Christmas for the Black Gang
The valve itself was of a Dewrance make and had a screw in Monel Metal seat. Normally if a valve is passing due to a mark on the seat it requires a bit of grinding paste on the Valve itself which is used to grind the mark in the seat out as well as bedding in the Valve itself, however Monel Metal valves are a different matter and take a bit of grinding out. It was decided that as the Valve seat was of the screw in type the Valve seat would be changed and the special removal jig was fitted to the Valve body, this basically consisted of a machined piece that fitted over the two lugs on the Valve seat and then a bar to pull/push to unscrew the seat. Now I was a fit young lad in his 20's and I couldn't budge it, the Fireman and Greaser were fit lads and they couldn't budge it and then Bill decided he would have a go bearing in mind he must have been in his late 50's. Now Bill was a nice chap, a Churchgoer and I never heard him swear, however he tried his hardest to move the V/v seat but it would not move, the Fireman suggested he should swear at it and Bill came out with a mouthful of expletives that would make a Royal Marine blush and much to everyone's amazement the thing moved leaving Bill with a grin on his face.