Friday 22nd/Saturday 23rd - Underground, Overground...

...Wombling free! Friday was assigned as "Winchcombe Wombles day" the aim being to have a tidy up of 'stuff' scattered round the yard in the undergrowth, and basically fill the skips up!

We wombled round the yard with trolleys going back and forth at quite a rate:

We also took the opportunity to clear out some of the stuff in the RBr which will be the next major project - its going to have a new kitchen so all the old fittings well past their sell by date are going to be scrapped:

We also chose today as a good day to have the annual high wire inspection, which necessitates everything being shunted out to allow access for a cherry picker. It gave a good opportunity to see an overall view of where everything's at. The 2 extensive and lengthy carriage restorations CK 16221 and BSK 34929:

And the 3 wagons currently in, the Mink A, the Queen Mary of course, and the Fruit C:

A group photo (courtesy of Richard) mid way through the day:

The Wombles of Winchcombe yard are we!

And the results:

Hmm, think we need a new skip! (thanks to Dave for those photos, it was dark by the time I remembered!)

Wombling mission complete, a couple of us stayed a little longer to progress the Queen Mary; I masked up the waist line inside to do some more painting and Dave red oxided one of the veranda floors:

Thanks to Richard for the photos.

Saturday

Starting with our newest victim recruit, Bob is Tony's son and joined us today, and in the process claimed the title of C&W's youngest volunteer off of me!

He got stuck straight in cleaning up one of the window frames for the CK.

More doors! Chris was investigating the Cotswold side guards door on 34929, while I think Robert was, rather excitingly, actually working on door pillars for the CK rather than the BSK, hurrah!

No less than 8 people were doing various things on the Queen Mary today, possibly a record. Today was vacuum brake test day, and it was shunted out over the pit as some adjustment was expected:

The portable vacuum pump was hooked up and we created and destroyed vacuum a few times to see what happened:

I did the honours testing the setter and watching the gauge, all good up here!

Underneath though it didn't quite meet John's standards, the piston went up into the cylinder a little too much. So he and Andy disappeared underneath to fiddle with the relevant bit:

While this was going on 2 teams of 2, Paul and Maurice, and me and Richard, were finally bolting in place the new veranda sides:

We had also rather hopefully left one of the padded bench seats with upholstery to see what they could do with it as it was looking a bit tatty, they soon worked their magic (so quickly in fact I missed an in progress picture)

Much better!

Once adjustments were made and we were shunted back inside, Dave got the "fun" job of going round priming all the bolt heads:

The interior is coming along nicely, Paul blacked the stove with heat resistant paint (yes, I do want to test it out at some point) and Maurice carried on with the lower dark colour:

An end of day photo, just the 1.5" black line to do most of the way round and a few other bits and pieces, it's coming together:

Further preparations for the gala goods train took place in the afternoon with John and Andy trundling round the yard with the portable vac pump to test a few more wagons out. This one passed:

Along with several others. The beer tank threw up a few issues though:

But hopefully nothing in surmountable. Ian and Tony also did some preparatory shunting which was a nice surprise, so although I missed taking a photo, thank you for doing that :-)