Saturday 3rd - Priority Everything

 A very grim day weather-wise, noses were briefly poked out of doors to watch the train before quickly scuttling back in:

It was good to see 4270 out on service trains again. No doubt the enclosed cab was very welcome with the crew today. C&W members seemed to be running most of the railway today, with Bob, Andy, Clive and Michael all seen on guard/TTI duties, along with John as signalman above (he's in that hooded coat somewhere!).

John's been doing a lot of behind the scenes work recently to help document some of our processes, particularly around bogies and doors. Unseen, unphotographable, but vital stuff, it's all very well having nice shiny carriages but it's all a bit pointless if we're not allowed to run them.

On that subject, Ian, Alan and John (too many Johns, even saying John H isn't differentiating enough!) continued the work on the CK's bogies:

Here putting one of the axle boxes back together.

Later on one of the bogies was moved into the workshop - a first we think - to make room for some shunting on Tuesday for a couple of carriages that need a quick visit on the jacks.

Smile Ian! This was after holding a brief meeting to work out what our priorities are in terms of what's in the workshops currently. Turns out, everything is! Oh well, t'was ever thus. The CK is important as it's another compartment coach, and we think we'll need them for frontline service for quite a while yet. The BSK has more compartments and disabled accommodation and a handbrake, so that's always going to be useful, and the RMB is needed for Christmas services. Better get to it then folks!

With that in mind, Dave was busy cleaning up heating covers for the CK:

By the end of the day he'd even found the missing one, excellent. John was busy working on some of the heating pipes, here turning up a small section on the lathe:

On the BSK Steve (left) was progressing some more of the panelling, while Dave was engaged in high level activities finishing the body prep above the corridor connections, which will allow Ken to get on and finish those:

Away from the pressures of deadlines, John stripped a compartment seat back. 

As usual they're well ahead of the rest of us, so John can be excused for disappearing before I managed to come up and explore. Thus I have no idea which coach this is from, the number written on it from a coach long since scrapped.

Meanwhile the paintshop was a hive of activity, with Ainsley (left) and Phil starting the top-coating on the Malvern side of the RMB:

Russ took the opportunity to descale the the boiler:

Note the goggles as it's a rather nasty acid he's using to clean it.

The ends still elude completion, but George (left) and Richard carried on working them:

Hopefully we can call them finished this week.

Richard finished off by continuing the door threshold work started by Dave on Tuesday:

Look at the shine on that paint!