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.