Tuesday 29th - Summer hadn't quite gone away

Just six of us in today, but we got through a lot considering the smaller number. And with the biting cold wind now gone, summer had returned and we could have our doors open again.

 

 

 

Beginning with Upholstery, Dave was in again and stripping old seat head rests.

 

 

 

 

In the Paintshop it was of course crack on with RMB 1808. With most of the Cotswold side now with the first top coat, the underframe furniture looked worse the ever. We won't be cleaning up and painting the bogies, but the calor gas and battery boxes and other fittings are being cleaned and repainted.

 

 

John is painting the two calor gas box doors in Underframe Black. 

There will be the usual bun fight when it comes to picking out all the lettering in red, this type of paint job being somewhat popular to say the least!

 

 

 

The next job was vacuuming the floors of both boxes. We may as well do as good a job as possible and make life more pleasant for those that will be changing over the bottles when that time comes.

It was then on to the battery box covers. These needed a lot more work and as such John moved into the Workshop so that they could be cleaned up using a pad sander.

These covers tended to be given a tough overcoating by BR. Nowadays much of this coating has flaked off with age and we are left with a mixture of this and bare wood. If the covers had been in a very poor state we would have made some new ones.

 

On the Malvern side of the coach, we continued with the secondary filling and tidying up, before adding further undercoat as necessary.

The unpainted north end corner could now be done by Maurice as the end of the coach has been fully undercoated and the demarcating tape applied.

 

 

Ainsley generally worked at the southern end, ensuring any secondary filling was silky smooth and completely flat. As members of the Painting Team will know, this is something I'm very keen to see. Incompletely sanded filler stands out horribly when overpainted, especially when the gloss has gone on.

Ainsley then overpainted as required with more undercoat.

 

 

Maurice later moved over to the Cotswold side and top coated one of the two windows still in undercoat. He then began painting the edges of one of the doors and its inner frame. 

 

 

 

 

As for myself I forgot to take a photo of my main project for the day, which was repairing and repainting the thresholds of the centre and north end doorways on the Cotswold side. 

 

While all the above was going on, in the Barn Bob continued with the first top coat of Flint Grey on the roof of CK 16221.

 

 

Yes, summer really was back. With a School Wartime Experience going on at the station we stayed away from there today, instead spreading out on S&T's trailer for our lunch break. The others opted for the chairs outside the Paintshop.

 

 

 

It also made a change to photograph our trains from the other side.

Foremarke Hall on the returning second train of the morning and P&O on the first of the afternoon trains. With the latter it was nice to see the brown panel on SK 24949 gleaming - while the Cotswold side of the coach had been repainted, the Malvern side had simply been polished. Despite having been initially painted several years ago, polishing had brought it up so well that it looked as though it had been repainted.

 

 

 

 

 

Monday 28th, 2020 The Same View

 If it's Monday, it's Carriage Cleaning.  9 reported in today.  One volunteer had to scrape ice off the car window!  With trains running throughout November it is obviously going to get colder and this year leaves us with a very serious problem.  9 or 10 volunteers Social Distancing in the (heated) platform 1 waiting room for tea break will not fit!  Creative thinking required....

Saturday 27th - That was the end of Summer then

 Just 5 degrees as I went over Cleeve Hill this morning, brrrr!

First thing's first, when I came in I noted one of the double doors had been taken off the BSK with the hoist. I'm not quite sure why, but hopefully it represents progress!

Later on, Chris was working on the central passenger door on the opposite side:

Out in the barn work was sill ongoing on one of the CK's bogies, with Andy cleaning up one of the wheelsets;

While Alan and John worked on the main bogie

Keeping them company was Bob, who was charging ahead with roof painting on the CK, first top coat already.

Today was armrest day in upholstery, all for 4763's rolling renewal.

The paintshop was a hive of activity, Jeff (left) was painting one of the corridor ends, before joining in with Richard (right) in top-coating window frames on the Cotswold side.

Meanwhile George was still finding a few rust spots on the Malvern side that needed attending too. Pam was painting some brackets (I did ask, no one knew were they were for!) before at the end of the day being fully initiated into the painting team, undercoating one of the lower chocolate panels that had had some more filler on.

It was good to see Paul and Phil in today, although they have been back since lockdown, I haven't seen them since March. Here they watched Foremarke go by.

Phil was sorting out radiators in the CK, it looks like a valve wheel is being refurbished here.

We also had an unexpected but welcome visitor today in the form of 4270, out on test after having her pistons put back together. 

What's that, you want to come on our pit? It'll cost you...

And you want it draining of the 6 inches of water in it too!? Picky picky! Phil did the honours, while Mike, Dan and I watched and chatted.

Finally, I didn't quite get round to everyone today as I ended up top-coating the whole of the Cotswold side of 1808. It was great to see another big leap forward on this side today.

It was also an opportunity for me to break out my new toy which I was most impressed with when I saw one at Didcot a few years ago:

It's a vapour brush storage box, so now we can contemplate buying some more expensive higher quality brushes without fear of them being dunked in tins of gunwash with sludge at the bottom and ruining them. All you do is wipe your brush on the edge of your paint tin, and pop it in the box. the vapour prevents the brush drying out, and a day/week/month later you simply take the brush out again and carry on painting - good isn't it!

Thu 24th / Fri 25th - Maintenance

Thanks again to Graham, especially as it means Alex doesn't need to do Saturday's report until tomorrow now!

Friday

The usual gang of 5 in attendance. More legionella avoidance flushing activities, draining flushing and refilling the overhead water tanks. Cleaning and lubricating the tracks of the sliding window quarter lights…

…it would be SO much easier if the tables weren’t in the way! John demonstrates the sliding window hop.

Thursday

The two Richards went looking for a suitable dynamo and fixings to fit on the CK16621. It’s a case of finding items on carriages that have no hope of being refurbished any time soon so they made a trip into the far end of the yard to take the swinging arm and spindle from a carriage suitably low down on the restoration list.

A dynamo was found in the scrap pile which could be suitably mounted and painted. Note - the dynamos on the GWSR are not functional as the speed of the trains is not normally enough to charge the batteries reliably - this is why we use battery chargers on each carriage and recharge the batteries overnight. 

Once the dynamo had been cleaned up a bit it was ready to be mounted and painted.

Unfortunately finding a key for attaching the pulley securely is not so easy - we’ll have to ask someone to make a key or get our own files out!

The dynamo key slot can be seen in picture above.

Wednesday 23rd - Down came the rain .....

As expected the weather folded, so our happy little band worked indoors. Derek has been fitting the 

floor back into 16221, he discovered the door frame had become detached from the chassis. Armed

with a squeezy water bottle and a welder, I glued it back together.

Before and after.

With 16221s bogies cleaned of by pressure washer, John Hamer can see the relevant parts.

Tony is wire brushing a piece of brake linkage

Removal of suspension and brake parts for inspection, cleaning and painting.

Bryan carried on from last weeks job, cleaning some rather derelict steel sections ready for the container roof. The blog title tells the story, so next week weather provided we will mob handed get this meccano set in position.

After much deliberation, Rex and myself have decided on a plan to renovate the door skin for 1808

door 2. The radius of the door is the difficult bit, so we spent the afternoon making a former for our fly press .... so far its looking good.

Meanwhile in the paint shop, Ainsley is carefully cleaning around the window frames. These small details seem so time consuming, but the finished product makes it all worth while.

Ed in the carpentry shop is working on yet another door, at eye level.

Colin is fitting the sliding doors to the disabled compartment ....

Phil is giving a helping hand with the door runner gear.

The upholstery team, doing a fantastic job of those lovely seats we all like to sit on.

Later, that door skin is nearly ready for welding. Mind you there are other patches to do, it is hoped we can eventually make full door skins.

Towards the days end Rod is just tidying up.

A good day with much progress!