Saturday 21st - Making the most of things

Another busy Saturday with a good range of activities taking place. Even though spending nearly 3 hours away from the Works to do the complete round trip of the line, I was still able to capture much of what had been happening. However apologies to anyone I have missed.

With SK 25501 now sold to be converted and sited in a restored station for use as an 'Orangery'/lounge, we are able to remove many of the underframe parts for spares as well as swapping the bogies.

 Andy and John H. were busy with the Cotswold side vacuum cylinder and DA valve.

 Alan was removing parts of the brake rigging.

The two rescued DA valves.

Servicing one of our vacuum cylinders was new member Ben. Ben will actually be part of our Door team, but with limited work available with the doors, is helping out the Dirty Gang.

Another photo of Ben was taken and has been added to the Door Team part of the Meet The Teams menu in the blog's home page.

Ben was later joined by Richard, former Head of C&W, and now our Chairman and Company Secretary.

John S. was making metal brackets for more new vacuum cylinder gaiters.

Phil was back with his toilet cisterns, servicing more valve units.

A useful impromptu meeting for Ian, our Head of C&W, and John A. who is Head of our Friday Maintenance Team.

After an enjoyable holiday in Cornwall, George was back with the filling and sanding on the remaining parts of CK 16221. We are almost finished with this until missing capping strips have been reinstated.

Over to the 3rd Rake to find Dennis going through checking the toilet tanks.

One of the decorative repairs required - the unfortunate result of a leaking roof.

In another coach Paul was cleaning the ceiling. Spiders have been busy with their webs!

It was just John and Jenny in Upholstery today. The refurbishing of TSO 5042 continues with the lovely Bournemouth Blue moquette. Jenny is preparing another piece for what looks to be a side pad.

John removes the old crumbling foam from an arm rest with a grater plane.

Paul E. tackles another set of planking for the Mink A van with a second top coat of GW Grey.

Now back to BSK 34929 with the undercoated Malvern side double doors now ready for top coating in Maroon. However before Martin can begin, an adjustment is needed to the taped up line on the adjacent bodyside. The latter fell away as it neared the capping strip and so failed to match with the tape on the door. The lining out gauge is used to correct the tape line, after sanding down the hard paint ridges from the original taping.

The completed first top coat. It's good to see more and more top coat going on. A long way to go yet though with the completion of the first coat, adding the second top coat, lining out, and finally two coats of varnish.

Just a few yards away the base coat of Light Grey is still going on as we catch up with the door preparation and painting.

Good progress on this was also made and by the end of the day Phil's efforts mean that another area can be undercoated in Madder and then top coated.

Alex was TTI on Train 2 during the morning, but came in for the afternoon and began second top coating the windows on the Cotswold side. By the end of the afternoon just three remained to be done.

Steve and Dave E. mounted the final compartment door and then reinstated the very heavy corridor connection door.

Door 10 (Cotswold side north end) unfortunately still wasn't quite right and both Ainsley (whom I missed) and Robert were once again working on it.

Dave H. was busy sanding down more bits from TK 24006 ready for varnishing.

Pam was back after missing a week attending the Friends of Toddington Station summer meet-up, so a fair amount of varnishing to do. She is still taking care of Max for some friends who are away, so once again his bed was placed nearby.

Max was restless while at the Works two weeks ago, so I suggested to Pam that we do a round trip of the line so he wasn't stuck in the Works all day. After all the work we do with our coaches, it's nice to be able to get out and actually enjoy travelling in them. This particular coach is one of the two with the lovely red chain-link moquette.

To end today's posting, Alex has added some interesting information on some new wagons

And finally, while 3 carriages are soon to be leaving us, on Friday 2 "new" wagons arrived for us to play with instead at Toddington. Both purchased by members of the steam loco department, firstly we have another GWR Starfish:

This came from the Pontypool Blaenavon Railway and requires a full restoration, the underframe is reasonably sound but the body has suffered considerable corrosion over the years.

And secondly is this GWR water tank, the tank itself has yet to be delivered:

There are only 2 others of this kind in preservation so is a bit of a rarity. The previous owner had already done a lot of work on this and the chassis is fully overhauled, so it just needs putting all back together. I believe it has already entered the shed at Toddington for that to happen so hopefully it won't be too long before it emerges fit to run.