Tuesday 3rd - A quiet day and a look over the fence

 Not many in today, and even fewer photos I'm afraid as I was away on other duties for part of the day.

The main event for today was re-greying the Malvern side of CK 16221. As ever the first coat revealed more to do, but also unfortunately the first coat went on a bit swirly and unevenly so needed to be sorted out.

In early doors as usual, Maurice and Dave got going with some bits of sanding down on one half:

While Stu soon joined in getting stuck in with the grey undercoat on the other half:

Later in the day, all done, that looks much better chaps!

Upstairs Dave was again plugging away at 5042's seats, surely they must be getting there soon?

Later on Dave applied some stain and varnish to the cover for the locking mechanism on the double door (on the right) and then started tidying up some of the door edges which were a little rough after all the adjustments required to make them fit:

I painted a few planks for Richard on the Mink, I think these are specially cut for the doors:

Meanwhile during afternoon tea break for a change we didn't watch trains, but caterpillars instead!

Also in today but not pictured, Alan was making a start on finishing off the capping strips on 34929 now the door team have finished with the fitting, and Bob and Kevin were sorting out seats, doors and other stuff stored in the monster van, it's quite an Aladdin's cave in there!

To make up for lack of pictures, here's a few I took on a visit to Didcot on Saturday, it was their 60th anniversary gala so they put on a good show!

The star of the show for me was their recently overhauled little 0-4-0ST Trojan:

Of course what you go to Didcot for is the loco line-up outside the shed!

6023 now sadly out of ticket, we had a lovely couple of summers when it visited us.

A different angle with a couple more locos:

The view from up on the coal stage:

Ah, it's a carriage and wagon blog, I almost forgot! Didcot have a superb variety of GWR rolling stock, what I wouldn't give to have a rake of these or something similar on our line:

Possibly the most fussy carriage livery, note the thin brown line inset on the cream panels along with everything else, wouldn't fancy trying to do that.

A short van train was parked up by the carriage traverser which looked rather smart, now this we could replicate!

The Steam railmotor was parked alongside the main shed, sadly out of ticket now awaiting work:

Visiting from NYMR was this super little Lambton Colliery loco, well out of region but it blended in well:

The other guest was an S160 from the Churnet Valley. Actually a very appropriate guest, as Didcot was home to several of these during the war.

The jolly jape crews used to play with these as recalled by Harold Gasson (based at Didcot) in his excellent books was the crew to be relieved would pack the firebox full just before the relieving crew took over, make a hasty exit and listen for "the world to end" as he described it as the safety valves exploded open!

The whole site is very pleasant, much greener than it was in steam days!

And of course the newbuild Sant, Lady of Legend looked extremely smart, first time I'd seen this and it looked excellent in its original livery too: