Tuesday 6th - Ooh it was cold!

A bitterly cold day with most of our work being done in the Barn, the coldest place in the Works, but we made some great progress nevertheless. 

 

Stu and I were first in and soon got cracking on cleaning up the Cotswold side of the BG now that almost all the sanding had been completed. Alex soon joined us and sanded the final two patches of filler on the northern half. Stu then wiped the whole side with white spirit to remove the last bits of dust.

 

Alex then got cracking with applying our universal base coat of undercoat Light Grey, leaving just the rusted patch at the base of the nearby door. Nick will be taking a look at that to decide what to do.

At the north end Richard filled the large craters that resulted from the removal of the old loose filler.

 

On the Malvern side Roger carried on the filling/sanding process, achieving quite a lot by the end of the day. Hopefully we will soon be able to grey up this side too.

Bob had finished working on the Malvern side of the roof and had now proceeded to add Etch Primer where needed on the Cotswold side. The undercoat on the coach side had by now dried.

With the sun out it was actually quite warm when out of the strong wind, so we opened one of the roller shutters to let some warmth in. With that lovely blue sky I took the opportunity to get another photo of our newly completed RMB 1808.

Returning inside to find the source of the banging, I guessed correctly that it was Derek back inside the First Class toilet compartment in CK 16221 and working on the supports for the new floor. 

One of the floor supports being cut and shaped to enable the fitting of cross sections.

A quick shot at the end of the day to view the progress. Derek had to spend a lot of time adjusting the thickness of the centre top support,

Moving outside and up into SK 24006, which will be the oldest runnable SK when it is restored. Dave and Phil were on board again sorting out more bits. The above photo shows a number of items that have been cleaned up and varnished.

Two of the compartment doors that will need sanding down, restaining and varnishing.

Phil holds up the step that will be used to replace the missing one at the south end of 24006. It is slightly smaller than the original, so the holes will need modification to enable fitting. This is only a cosmetic touch as none of these steps are now used.

By late afternoon, the clouds had gathered and we had a mini snow storm of mainly hard pellets. Not long after the blue skies returned to bring back some warmth, although the cold wind was still there.

Alex had disappeared to the Paintshop trestles and was engrossed in his work for the Loco Dept. There are two of these boards.

The template he used to make the French Chalk imprint on the board. He was then able to paint the individual letters that had been marked out. 

 Two of the three new headboards that Alex has painted up ready to be sign-written.