Wednesday 8th - An important visit

Today was a rather special one and as such our normal Tuesday attendance was transferred accordingly to boost the Wednesday attendance, which occasionally is lower than it used to be in pre-Covid times. We were being visited by the Deputy Editor of Railway Magazine with a view to creating a feature on the Railway in a forthcoming issue. 

Gareth Evans, the deputy Editor of Railway Magazine, with Ian Crowder, the Railway's Public Relations officer. Gareth was given a complete tour of Carriage and Wagon and showed a great interest in our work. It was a very enjoyable visit for us all.

Richard began his day working on the Cotswold side north end door (Door 10) of BSK 34929, adding some final filler where needed.

Towards the middle of the same side, Ainsley was preparing the doorway of Door 9 for the capping strips. That new sheet metal took quite a bit of drilling. 

On the Malvern side Trevor is preparing the north end door for the leather straps which prevent this door from opening too far.

With the draught excluder now on the centre passenger door, David sanded down the areas of the door frame where the paint was chipped, applied primer on the new sections of wood, and later gave the whole frame a fresh coat of undercoat Madder.

In the Workshop Rex was preparing the missing parts of the French key brackets for both corridor ends on 34929.

At the north end of the coach John was working on the vacuum pipe in preparation for fitting new hoses.

Keith began sorting out the four tables for the compartments in 34929. Initially sanding the trim looked hopeful with respect to being able to varnish instead of paint. However when he attacked the top side, the surface underneath the paint was not so good and will probably have to be repainted. 

By the late afternoon Richard had progressed to undercoating Door 10 and the corner section, another grey area ticked off the list. Remaining areas still in the base grey undercoat are the central and guards door area on this side,. and the guards door on the Malvern side. We are nearly there!

Those doors on the Door Teams benches are no longer for 34929, but for CK 16221. After so long working on the one coach it must be great to move on the next. All the doors are the later aluminium type and, while eliminating the corrosion problem with the sheet metal skin on the wood frame, these present a different problem. Steel screws in aluminium "weld" themselves in and consequently are very difficult to remove. Trying to drill them out is not easy to say the least, so the tried and trusted solution is to insert wood blocks which are glued in with very strong adhesive. The various fittings are then attached to the blocks. With Trevor looking on, Rod inserts the heavy wood base.

The second door with blocks in place.

General refurbishment of the vacuum cylinders in the Workshop continues. Ben is working on a cylinder release valve.

Ken cleans up the piston from a vacuum cylinder.

Ben and John run over the all important records. Presumably this is in relation to the vacuum cylinder work (taking the photo hurriedly and then moving on to take the next, I forgot to ask!).

Captured at last! Apologies to Steve for leaving him out of a number of postings, but working quietly on top of the mezzanine it's easy to see why. Steve displays the various parts making up one of the LED strip lights, which greatly save the battery power in our coaches.

Keeping the torch alight for TK 24006 was Alan, carefully sanding down some of the lovely Weathered Sycamore panelling from this 1951 built coach. We are sticking to hand sanding with these as it is too easy to overdo pad sanding and ruin the veneer. Meanwhile in chatting to Alan today he mentioned two amazing facts about his Welsh ancestry (which we will explain in a future posting).

In Upholstery Jenny and Dave are working on another seat base for TSO 5042. Their first job of the day was to winch up another load of seating from 5042 for refurbishment. The team cannot be far off completing their efforts with this coach.

John was taking measurements of a DMU seat back with respect to the amount of moquette that would be required to cover it. Presumably this was either to see if we already have enough to do a set number of seats or for getting an estimate for purchasing more moquette for the job.

Moving on to freight vehicles, Richard primes two more planks for the Mink A van.

Richard was using the mortice machine to prepare the main timbers for the Mink A doors.

Moving out to the yard and the Queen Mary brake van, we were still very much in the destructive stage. The bad plyboard panelling was stripped out along with the corroded bolts.

Returning a little later, both Gerry and Alex were continuing the long job of power brushing the old paintwork. At which point I joined them and was soon cleaning up the base beam between the two doors.

Returning later to find Gerry removing the Malvern side of the south end veranda.

With so much grime Alex was keen to get out the power wash, so with all electrical equipment and cables removed, he soon  got cracking.

By late afternoon, Gerry had been replaced by Richard, and then Mike from the Loco Dept arrived with two powerful needle guns. The compressor was started up, pipework connected and Mike got going on the Cotswold side.

Alex kitted up and then got the second gun going. The results of their efforts was quite dramatic with respect to amount of old paint removed, seemingly much faster that with the power brushing. If Alex wanted a change from signwriting station information boards, this certainly provided it, and he enjoyed the change even though he ended up looking like coal miner!

Prior to the needle gunning, Richard and Alex had been discussing what could be replaced on the Queen Mary to put it back more to what would have been its original make up. Much of the metal side panelling would have been planking. The problem was whether we had enough planking over from the Mink A project and the time available to get it all done. Some could certainly be achieved, and as such Richard wasted no time and was quickly measuring up and then cutting the necessary lengths of plank.

Overall, it had been a very varied and interesting day. It was also nice to feature a Wednesday again. Nick who normally does the posting for this day has had to do a number of Thursdays instead and is now on holiday.