Tuesday 27th - Inside and out

Another month nearly gone, but how we have progressed with RMB 1808 in the past few weeks. Once again the Tuesday concentration was in the Paintshop and working on this coach. However we were far from overcrowded and, as is now the norm, our attendance was low. 

Beginning inside 1808, the counter area is being repainted to refresh everything. We generally use Executive Light Grey for interiors, but Russ felt it would be nice to do this area in GW Cream as this would be brighter.

Everything to be painted has been undercoated. Roger worked on the store cupboard doors and surround, giving it all a light sand down.

Russ meanwhile was re-whitening the shelving.

Returning later to see how they were doing, Roger had made considerable progress with the new top coat, indeed making the area look very much brighter.

There is always an element of tidying up to do, and in this case the inner door frame and door edges needed a second coat of cream top coat. If possible we try to do just a single coat in these places as we have no wish to have doors sticking with too thick a layer of paint.

Maurice also did some tidying up in the south corridor connection, while I began the day repairing some small tears in the connection rain cover with roofing canvas and felt adhesive. The whole canvas will then receive another coating of matt black paint.

It was also time to do some more lining out on the Malvern side of the coach. Richard completed the top yellow line that had been started by Alex on Saturday, before proceeding to the bottom line on the south half, which had been started by Pam.

Sometimes, despite best endeavours, the painting goes awry. In this case the north end large panel had some runs which we felt would be desirable to remove. The paint had been put on a week ago, but gloss can take a while to really harden, especially where there is a run which can remain soft under the skin for quite some time. When this happens sanding will simply pull out the soft paint and create a pit. However we were lucky and Phil, using 150 and 240 paper, was able to sand out almost all the runs as they had hardenend sufficiently. We will leave this panel for a few more days and then re-topcoat it.

On the subject of sanding, it was back to the usual with the CK, though today Alan had my company for a while. Progress is slow as there is still a lot to do.

In the Upholstery Shop, Dave was using some horsehair to pack the recess at the front of this seat base. This would enable the foam to sit properly on the base and not sink at the front.

He then threaded string through the horsehair to secure it to the base.

To do this he was of course using one of Upholstery's famous 12 inch needles. 

We are very polite to our upholsterers when they are using these!

To end the report it just has to be a photo of P&O shuffling by with the damp drizzly atmosphere providing some wonderful steam effects.

I However on the second run down I had to take another shot.

Lots of happy passengers were seen today now that half term is underway. It's all thanks to them that we are able to continue our work.