Saturday 11th - Look what we found!

 We had an excellent day on the Queen Mary today, including a rather nice surprise. Before we get to that though, Dave and Bob continued the clean-up on the metal; Dave working along the Malvern side lower panel with the wire brush before taking up the needle gun for the end structural steel:

And Bob took on the Cotswold side guard's lookout:

As well as re-planking the veranda sides, we were contemplating replacing the plywood/metal cladding on the main cabin sides with leftover timber from the Mink restoration. It was looking a bit tight so Richard asked if I could strip away a little of the plywood inside to see exactly how long the new planks would need to be. I was surprised to find this:

Planking already there! And in pretty good condition too. That was a turn up for the books. So obviously the next stage was to see what it looked like from the outside and have the metal cladding off.

I went along to see how many nuts I could take off the coach bolts with a spanner, surprisingly about 60% were held firm enough by the wood to do so. Richard followed with the angle grinder to take the remainder off. After a lot of careful levering we had the lower panel off, and here we're starting on the upper, thanks Dave for the photo.

When we eventually got that one off, we had a fantastic surprise:

Look at that, the original big S R lettering from 1936! We soon had the wooden battens off to reveal the full picture:

We were extremely chuffed with that find, and all that planking still in good enough condition to keep, with a bit of wood filler to fill all the screw holes and a good sand down. Naturally the lettering will be traced first to be reproduced after painting. So that answers Paul from St Blazey's question from Thursday, yes, the plan is to return it to SR brown livery with the red ends, and to answer Phaasch, the livery choice was inspired by seeing the Bluebell guys' work.

Elsewhere on the wagon front the South end of the Mink was receiving its planking by Richard:

Progress by early afternoon when he switched to help on the Queen Mary:

Right, back to carriages, and specifically 34929 in the paintshop. Surprise surprise, more door work. Ainsley was making some adjustments with an angle grinder:

While in the woodwork shop Robert was shaping something on the bandsaw:

Sorry, I forgot to ask what! Chris was also there, planing the top section of a door frame:

Later it was tried in position:

Upstairs in upholstery they're nearing the end of TSO 5042's seat replacement, they think that have 6 left to go, or 3 bays' worth. Dave was taking off the old moquette:

And Jenny and John added more horsehair padding:

In the workshop John had a rather precise job to do. Next to the bottle of WD-40 is the end product, a fabric cover for the vacuum cylinder piston. John is making all the metal bits for it, here marking them all out with some engineer's blue and a scribe:

George was the sole worker on CK 16221 today, giving some attention to the South end:

and Likewise it was just Robert on TK24006 sanding down more veneer. Look, he's nearly made it to the other end now:

Pam came in with another dog this week she's dog-sitting, this is Ted, and he was quite happy to settle down while Pam was cleaning up the wooden edges on a set of tables (where are they for?)

Obviously Dave had to say hello too: