Saturday 9th - A Shuffle Around

 It was time for a shuffle around of things in the barn. Top of the list was to remove the Dogfish from the through road, with all hopper repairs complete and the draw gear inspected. Tony did the honours as ground shunter while Ian drove:

Shunting is always a good opportunity to do a bit of a sweep up and today was no exception:

The last dogfish was brought in just to do the draw gear exams, the hopper repairs previously completed:

Before that too was taken out and swapped places with the Queen Mary on the jack road:

(photo - Dave) I took it for a little test ride up, and back into the other road in the barn:

(Photo - Paul)

Despite the shunting we had more rapid progress on the Queen Mary today. Paul finished cleaning up then started undercoating the Malvern side underframe:

Maurice was delighted to be painting the pink on the headstocks:

While Bob undercoated the two platforms either end before moving on to blacking the Cotswold side underframe:

I started off the day sanding the last few ceiling panels inside the cabin (what a rotten job that is, further grateful thanks to everyone else who did their bit!) and then moved on to figuring out how to do the veranda sides with Richard:

You'd think a jigsaw puzzle where you have to cut your own pieces would be easy but not so! At least the planking lines up with the bolt holes pretty well, not bad considering this T&G wasn't actually specifically bought for this project.

Elsewhere the workbenches in the workshop were at full occupancy:

From left to right, Andy was making some more stands for vacuum cylinders, John was making up more sleeves for vacuum cylinder pistons, and Phil was drilling holes in some door locks I think for the access doors for the various pipework in coach vestibules.

In the depths of the paintshop Pam found another selection of bits and pieces on the painting tables for her attention, here priming some more scotches, these ones destined for 34929, a requirement for all brake carriages to carry some:

Dave was back from his holiday and here is sorting out brushes topping up gunwash tins etc.:

Once again the planers were the tool of choice for the woodworkers today on 34929 with more adjustments required from Steve and Robert: