Tuesday 28th - Mainly the QM

 A lot of concentration on the Queen Mary brake van today, but other work was done as well, and despite the relatively small attendance, a lot was achieved.

Beginning with the Queen Mary, Bob was back to internal roof scraping and sanding, before giving the whole area a coating of primer.

With his ears well plugged, Alan worked on the inside of the cabin with one of the two air sanders in use today. The cabin had a liberal amount of bits and pieces of old wood and seating which were taken out and stacked in the foreground - this pile was later removed and what was to be retained was stored elsewhere.

Later on Maurice was adding wood primer to the old planking on the Cotswold side of the van. Bob meanwhile, with his earlier job completed, was coating the ducket with grey etch primer.

Next job, a coat of etch primer on the roof end, another area of galvanised sheet metal.

A two-in-one of Bob adding anti-corrosive green primer to the cleaned up buffers and buffer beam, while in the background Maurice has moved round to the Malvern side to coat the old planking there with wood primer.

Wood filler had been liberally used on much of the planking around the whole van. Alex was in the process of sanding this down on one of the doors.  

Moving across to Dogfish 993121, of the three ballast wagons this so far had not had the hand wheels cleaned up and repainted. 

Tony set about this and when I photographed him he was well into undercoating the hopper door wheels.

The next job was to take the free'd up vacuum cylinder into the Workshop for servicing. The bolts securing the lid have been loosened and soaked in lubricant.

Meanwhile he had removed the old vacuum hoses and stripped off the connectors, which will be put onto new hose pipes.

Meanwhile Alex completed the repainting of the handwheels on Dogfish 992930 with the On - Off instructions painted in red.

Kevin, our very able stores man, was tidying up the main area at the north end of the Workshop, before tackling more jobs with our outside storage. 

Having cleared away all our display material after the weekend gala, it was time for a bit of a tidy up in the Paintshop. Wrapped up in a bag I once again came across this wonderful set of antiques that had been donated by a member of the Railway. They had been used by the father of a friend when he was based at Stratford Locomotive Works (Great Eastern / LNER). 

 

The date on the tin of varnish is 8/10/62, so almost 60 years old. I intend emailing copies of these photos to Williamson as I am sure they will be interested in seeing them.

 

With storm clouds and the wind increasing it eventually turned into a day of very heavy rain. Not much sitting outside after lunchtime! Before we know it we will be back to our Mess Room for our breaks.

It was an early finish today, but before locking up and departing, a final look at a very much transformed Queen Mary van.

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Finally a quick flashback to Gala Sunday 26th.

I think our days of acquiring transfers for our coaches may be over - well, as long as Alex is around. This is the north end of BSK 34929, the south end will be next. When I asked if he was doing the main numbers too, the reply was a very definite yes!