Saturday 31st - Here we are again

How time flies, with another Saturday upon us, and a busy one as usual.

The gradual priming and undercoating of the planking for the Mink A van steadily proceeds. Obviously with such a lot to do all this will take some time to complete. Paul is coating another set of primed planks with the undercoat Dark Grey, while out of sight to the left, more undercoated planks now line the Malvern side wall of the Paintshop.

Richard meanwhile is preparing another plank ready for reducing in width to cater for differences in the height between the ends and sides of the base frame.

Moving on to CK 16221, Phil is preparing the new battery box for the Malvern side of the coach.

On the Malvern side itself Bob is busy sanding down the door from which he had previously scraped off all the old paint. He then went over the whole side with a pad sander to reduce some of the grey undercoating which had gone on unevenly in places. A fresh coat will be applied during the following week. 

Later in the day Andy and Ian set about removing the Malvern side vacuum cylinder from 16221, which proved to be a bit of a trial. 

Success! It just remained to swivel the cylinder with the piston at the top and bed it down onto the mini pallet. The next job will be to open it up and check the relevant parts. Considering their age, these can be remarkably clean inside.

 John S. was repairing more of our G clamps, a very useful job because they are often in use.

Chatting to him is our newest member John H. who joined us today and had been working with Alan in the Barn.

 

John and Jenny are stapling new moquette to another seat back for TSO 5042. I believe they are now over half way through the refurbishment.

While they are assembling, Dave continues with the dismantling, carefully taking the old moquette off another seat back.

Moving downstairs to find Ainsley working on the new panelling for Door 10 off BSK 34929. For those like me who have trouble with door numbers and their locations, it's the north end door on the Cotswold side.

Covers for the locking bars have been constructed for the two sets of double doors of the new disabled vestibule. Steve is busy making some adjustments to these.

Robert is trimming the new right hand pillar for the centre passenger door on the Cotswold side of 34929 .......................

 ................. ready for another test fitting. Robert is now our most distant volunteer, coming all the way from South Wales and usually attending twice a week.

Pam, another of our long distance volunteers, was back varnishing more panels and beading from TK 24006. Yet more awaits in the Workshop to be sanded down.

 The new joggler (to enable overlap welding) is now built and being painted by Pam.