Thursday 10th - An interesting day

Another busy day with a good number attending. What with this and the thankfully much busier trains with a good number of happy smiling passengers, it's beginning to feel like old times again.

Nick was once again making Thursday his weekly day in, so just two photos sent to him for Wednesday.

(Photo: Bryan):  Rex cleans up the Cotswold side door of one of the Dogfish ballast wagons where new sections of sheet metal will be welded.

(Photo: ?)  Bryan had someone take this photo of himself preparing the sections of sheet metal needed for the repair.

Now on to Thursday and remaining with the progress on the Dogfish.
 

 Nick spot welds the new metal on to the side door.

Inside the hopper Gerry, with help from Ken, is preparing the temporary floor which will enable Nick to make the repairs to the various rusted holes. Ballast wagons are not the easiest things to move around in.

History repeating itself. A flashback to June 2014 with Pete, one of our former welders, taking a well-earned break after repairing one of the first two Dogfish wagons that we tackled. The job was finished as shown by the part-dismantled temporary floor. The repairs with the new angle-ground welds are clearly visible.

Nick assesses the new sections of sheet metal cut for the Malvern side door.

The remainder of the ballast train in its new home in our yard. The two middle wagons with a green tinge are the ones repaired in 2014.

Doing the rounds in the yard to find Dave H. was the only one working on SK 24006, treating some minor rust areas with a rust cure.

In TSO 4867 the Indoor Gang were carrying on from last week. Alan secures another new piece of internal window frame.

Geoff was doing likewise on the next window.

Over in the 3rd Rake siding, Paul was busy doing more cleaning in the currently redundant open coaches. Somewhat hot work as the cloud cover dispersed and the temperature outside was rising fast. The big shunt to restore the three rakes to their original pre-Covid formations has been scheduled for 5th July.

In the Workshop our electrical wizards, Richards I and II, were busy creating heat sinks for LED contollers out of aluminium sheet. The flourescent fittings in maroon RMB 1876 are being changed for LED strip lights. The sheet has been marked out in the required widths.

The sheet metal guillotine is now in the Barn, but it does the required job of creating the individual pieces.

There's always some Admin to do and Jeff, our C&W Finance Officer, was busy on the Works computer setting up another order in relation to the Mink Van restoration.

And when not doing that it was back to the Malvern side of BSK 34929. On inspection on Tuesday Alex noted some of the undercoated panels needed a bit more sanding (arghh - the major sin of incompletely sanded filler!). Jeff dealt with this and the affected areas were re-undercoated.

Then on to some more window frame top coating. We are still limited in what can be painted with most of the doorways still without capping strips and requiring some work.

Continuing with 34929's progress, the rebuilt skin for Door 9 needed adjustment regarding the centering of the hole for the handle. John V. discussed the problem with Gerry and the remedy.

Meanwhile members of the Door Team were working on the frame with Des drilling the necessary holes ready for re-fitting of the lock.

Rod was back on Door 8 checking the fit of the back panel having cut out the relevant corner under the lock.

Jasper, the much loved extra member of today's Door Team, enjoying the cool of the Woodwork/Doors shop. He was actually relatively still, which is unusual as being a cocker spaniel he is normally a bundle of endless energy and constantly on the go.

Phil was back on the heater units for 34929 and busy cleaning up the inner part of the heater control.

The inner face of the outer section nicely cleaned.

Just a wee problem with the other half on the heater itself - the broken embedded bolt on the righthand side. I later noticed Phil drilling the unit so I believe this was sorted out. 

The ironwork and handles for the covers of the new battery box for 34929 were put on by Richard P. in our Woodwork Team and left on the paint trestles. Red oxide and wood primer have been added and the remaining painting will be done on Saturday.

I was fascinated by Bryan's work today as having used the power saw to cut a small section of metal bar, he was now in the process of making it even smaller and then rounding it off.

It then all became clear. The dynamo mechanism for CK 16221 was being repaired with the small piece of metal providing a new key to lock the above pulley to the dynamo itself. Excellent work!

As always, our photos of the day's trains with P&O once again running the first one to Cheltenham.

The second train was also again with Foremarke Hall in charge. Signalman Richard just about to exchange the tokens with the fireman. The trains after the Cheltenham pick-up are looking very healthy now with a good number of passengers on board.

Today we had a bonus train with S&T's Baguley-Drewry inspection railcar heading off in the Toddington direction. Fondly nicknamed "Malcolm's Buggy" (after Malcom W., Head of S&T), we refurbished it back in mid-2016. This was a very enjoyable refurbishment and photos of it (not our's) were featured on the Internet, and it is even on YouTube with a sequence at Broadway, with Neil driving.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvY5hzS5z10

We need to have another go at the roof, the edges of which rusted quite quickly - we are not sure why.

To end a very interesting day, an extra item from Alex

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And finally I'll just sneak in with my contribution, I was 'working from home' on Thursday on a couple of headboards:

These are in conjunction with the photo exhibition to celebrate our 40th anniversary opening in July in the visitor centre at Winchcombe Station. I was quite pleased how they came out. - Alex.