Weds 24th - Just a few / Thur 25th - Busy

Wednesday

A bit quiet for a Wednesday with just 12 attending. Nevertheless we all had work to do.

Beginning with 1675 where Chris is making some adjustments to the kitchen door window mechanism support spring (lazy tongs), which was a little fierce in closing the window.

Pat is making a superb job of cleaning the larger part of the emergency ladder from CK 21272. After initial sanding, he is applying Colron Rosewood dye to put some colour back in.

The Mica van received some more attention with two more vertical sections welded into position. Here Steve is adding the all important primer paint, Red Oxide.

With many non-vehicular projects needing the metalwork teams input, John is making parts for an external lockable cage to hold new brake blocks. The combined weight will be somewhat substantial so this base unit has to be up to the job.

With the quick repaint project on SO 4790 now underway in the Barn, Dave is smoothing various bits of filler that he has been adding. Much of the general sanding down of the bodysides and the ends has been completed.

Bob is checking a number of safety gates which we use when carriage doorways are open and our volunteers are working inside. This one will be used across the south corridor exit of SO 4798 in the Barn to prevent anyone from falling out.              

Inside 4798, Rex and Bryan are removing windows and their internal wood frames. They are trying to salvage as many of the shaped strips as possible, a tricky job.

It was actually not raining when the lunchtime bell rang, so it was out to the "patio" and a cheery wave to the travellers heading south. Dinmore Manor was in charge of this rake.

They never seem to stop in upholstery, where Eve is overlocking seat covers for our Dean Forest Railway contract.

 John is cutting new seat bases from thin plyboard.

Laura is sewing new seat covers for the same project.

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Handing over to Dave now for Thursday's part of the post.

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Thursday

More like the normal number for a Thursday with 19 attending.

Beginning with P&O and the train nicely framed in the north corridor connection of BCK 21272.

Inside the guards compartment Phil begins the repaint. The ceiling looks very clean so we can leave that.

Returning later to find a nice area now repainted. Phil is able to put top coat directly on to the old paintwork, with the exception of the back of the door which was in a pretty bad state, and following a good sanding and clean up, requires undercoating.

The rack from the guards compartment is beginning to look a lot better as the Silver Hammerite goes on. The emergency ladder also looks very much better. On the left the new bench planks are now ready for installing.

Over to the 3rd and 4th rake coaches where Alan is fitting the new section of internal window frame in TSO 4772. 

Cleaning inside coaches on a warm muggy day is always tiring work. Dennis and Paul take a well earned break in BSK 35308.

Derek removes more worn out planking from the Malvern side of the Monster van.

That's better. Just the one section to trim to finish this area. We will eventually have a large sanding down and repainting job to do when all these repairs are finished.

Nobody in to work on either vehicle today.

Phil cleans up the tracking for one of the internal sliders giving access to 1675's kitchen and pantry.

Jeff, complete with his new hat, top coats the metal covers for the internal sliders tracking.

Richard II continues the very lengthy job of setting up 1675's 240 volt main distribution and control panel.

Dave was redoing the draught excluder on the Cotswold side kitchen door. New footboards have also been fitted where needed. These will be removed to paint.

Found them! The missing glass sections for the top of 1675's counter had been put safely away and as often happens with safe places ......... . Kevin, having cleaned them, carefully wraps them up until they can be reinstated. The metal frame is also stored but being large is more easily seen.

More tidying up for the south end stores area of the Workshop. Kevin as always doing a great job. In general it is now so much easier to find things.

A very nice presentation in Upholstery of various parts of the seating for SO 4798 in the new Snapdragon moquette. Our team does a fantastic job, whether it is main carriage seating, cushions, bags, spectacle cases, or miscellaneous seat re-covering, it's always brilliant and something of which we are very proud. No wonder visitors spend so long in here.

Dave C.

Tuesday 23rd - The good old days are back

A good number in today and a chance to get back to what we used to do - big time! With so much major refurbishment going on, there hasn't been space in the Works for quick repaints for quite some time.

The sound of mass pad sanders in the Barn was music for the ears as no less than five were working around SO 4790, preparing the coach for its quick repaint.

Stu was the first off, sanding the lower panel along the Cotswold side.

Ian got going in the centre of the Malvern side, .....

......... while Pat started at the north end and gradually worked round to do either side of the corridor connection.

Bob and Tony arrived and soon got cracking, joining Stu on the Cotswold side.

It was a really great effort, started by Alex last week. Lots of places for filler, one of the jobs to begin for the members of the Painting and Prep team in on Wednesday.

SO 4790 has a spacious area for wheelchairs, so when this goes out, then so can BCK 21272 which doesn't.

Meanwhile in the luggage area of 21272 Dave was well on the way to finishing the cream painting. Some of the panelling will have a second coat, and then we can get the skirting and black trim below the ceiling repainted. Then to finish off we need to repaint the floor.

While Dave was busy here, I cleaned the guard's compartment and sanded where needed; the back of the main door was very rough. Painting this out will nicely round off this end of the coach. The ceiling looks fine and won't need doing.

The five-man sanding team take a break now that the sun has broken through and watch Dinmore Manor returning north.

This was quite a contrast to the earlier part of the day which was damp and very humid. P&O passes with the first train of the day.

In the Workshop Richard completes the black glossing around the north corridor connection on FK 13326. This will enable Ken to mount the rain cover above the connection.

Annoyingly I didn't take a photo of Richard's next job which was to paint the back of RBr 1675's servery door in Executive Light Grey. This completes the servery painting.

Robert and Chris were back in 1675's corridor and working on the panelling.

Paul's first job was to survey the list of jobs on the MICA B board - Alex please note! 

Alex is currently in North Wales enjoying the little trains. Having myself done the VOR, WHR, and a number of times the FR, I know he will be having a great time. I wonder if he will include Snowdon?

Paul coated the repaired metal areas in red oxide before moving on to other work on the van.

Keith was kept very busy with a host of trestle jobs, which included what may be the final top coat of the bench planks, painting various endology items for Ken, and grab rails from the Monster van for Derek.

Mentioning the Monster van, Derek was able to avoid the rain and work on the repairs on the Malvern side.

Finally while walking through Upholstery to the office I just had to capture the striking piles of cushions in matched pairs. I guess these are destined for our shops where they continue to sell well, particularly as there is a reduction when bought in pairs. They can also be bought online if you are interested, but are unable to visit the Railway.

Monday 22nd - 14 Weeks

 14 Weeks? It's that long since we were able to get at the Malvern side of rake 2, carriage "A". It was a bit dirty! So I used the cutting paste on the the most northerly panels, before the Outside Team came by with the normal wash.

Before

After

This year we are trialling a new wash, as there are concerns the previous solution was damaging the paintwork. But ideally we need the revised painting procedure of varnished carriages to fully evaluate the outcome. On the present unvarnished paintwork the results are less than we would hope. The never ending learning curve that is a railway!

Another good turnout of 15. As usual the Outside Team are underway as we arrive. Paul, David, Tim and Peter getting setup. By the bin is one of the Toddington team doing some painting.

With the continuing good turnout we are starting to make inroads on the items that have to be left when we are short staffed. Here is Steve bending down to clean radiator covers.

Elsewhere Jane was cleaning luggage racks.

The rest of the team of Greg, John, Kath, Lynn, Nigel, Rich, Roger C and Val were all cleaning the interiors.

We share Mondays with the Toddington Station Team and enjoy excellent co-operation with them. Here they are just about to re-mount the hose reel stand that we (and they - to water the garden) use on platform 1. It had fallen over due to the legs rotting but they removed that section and re-mounted it in the post spikes. Just a little bit lower than it was!

A holiday blog, featuring railways visited. July 22nd 2024

 A bit different to the Wednesday blog ..... we have just completed a 3 week tour of North East and West England. We started at Crich Tramway museum in Derbyshire.

Included are as many tram rides as you like .....

They have a mezzanine viewing area of the workshops. Here is an amazing reconstruction of what was clearly a very dilapidated vehicle.

You are free to walk around the garaged trams all of which are operational.

Next was a visit to Steeplegrange railway, which is only a few miles away and very close to Matlock.

This little railway is brilliant, and uses mostly electric motive power or this little Ruston. It was formerly a quarry railway, and now provides  a ride to the top of the old line or a short branch into the other quarry accompanied by a talk on fossils which are plentiful in the old workings.

They use ex coalmine man riders, a bit of a squeeze for someone tall like me. but great fun.

This is the old branch line, the driver awaits for us while we are being educated about fossils.

Next, although sadly no track is the famous Monsal trail and of course the Headstone tunnel ....

We were glad of this as it was raining heavily. If you visit please be aware of many cyclists using the trail. of which many fail to announce their presence.

Just a short distance away between Bakewell and Matlock is Peak Rail, not too busy and a lovely trip to Matlock .

Steaming through beautiful Peak countryside.

A little bit further up country in the Lake District ..... at the Haverthwaite and Lakeside Railway.

Next move was to Yorkshire, staying just outside Skipton. Next on the Agenda was the Embsay and Bolton Abbey railway.

it was very busy with a number of coaches full of visitors ....

     

They have this very impressive Electric Autocar .... we were invited to have a look inside.

.... they also have this very nice carriage shed. 

..... with all of our compliments, we were offered a trip around the works ..... how could we refuse?

Just a few miles south is the Keighley and Worth Railway, we were made very welcome and enjoyed a round trip .......

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Doing the run around at Keighley Station ......

.......Inclusive is a visit to the Carriage Museum, some amazing stuff in there.

Next, well the name explains where we are. A delightful narrow gauge railway and very efficiently run by very friendly staff.

An interesting mix of motive power.

They have a turntable at each end of the line, which gives them a very rapid turn around.

This is the other end of the line, where you can alight and walk around the village.

The driver and guard doing a swift manoeuvre .....

Back to Heatherslaw .....

Apart from many others places of interest, we made our last stopover at Goathland which inevitably resulted in a trip on the North Yorks Railway.

Goathland for Whitby ......

Goathland for Pickering......

A goods train ran up and down the line all day ..... no guards van rides though.

The last train of the day from Whitby to Pickering, Diesel hauled until Grosmont (Network Rail), then a swap over to steam

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It is always worth a walk from Goathland to Grosmont along the former horse drawn trackbed, as you get closer views like this abound ......

A walk around the sheds, and look what we found ..... you may remember the TV programme featuring this steam tram belonging to ' Piglet'.

You may think we spent all 3 weeks on Railways, which is true but we did lots of other things.

On the return walk to Goathland we always make a detour to Beck Hole to one of the UKs smallest pubs, well after all that exercise we needed a glass of Lemonade!