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!
The brush device looks great, I know the problem we had painting preserved buses at Worcester Bus Preservation Society. Very difficult stopping the brushes getting clogged with set paint even when the brushes were suspended.
ReplyDeleteFine blog. That brush device looks a knockout
ReplyDeleteThanks Alex, be interesting to see if the brush box works for you! Did you pay much for it? You can shock us all by telling us how many brushes you use there, then we may try to raise some monies for more of these boxes if they work for you!
ReplyDeleteRegards
Paul & Marion
It was about £50, bought before the pandemic and the subsequent extreme pressure on the railway's finances by the way! I'd like to see how we get on with this one first, it may be that 1 box for common top-coating colours is all that is practical - including undercoats there's at least a couple of dozen paints we use. Each one would probably want a few brushes for more than one person/size of brush etc - it could start getting silly! We'll see how we get on, but thanks for the kind offer.
DeleteWhat Pam is seen painting are Spacer plates to go behind any re-fitted Pass-Comm valves. Normally we find (just at the 'wrong' time) that we need to 'scratch' cut some which rather delays proceedings.
DeleteHence, we now have a ready supply. Cut and drilled.
When painted, they can go into the Container.
I always find that i can keep brushes OK for a few days (no more than a week) in a jar of water, but you must know that.
ReplyDeletePowli