Saturday 27th - Walking in a Winter Wonderland

 We had a bit of a surprise this morning, many of us had made most of our journeys in before the snowstorm got going, and it was quite heavy too, settling despite the wet conditions. As it was the first day of Santa train operations, it couldn't have been timed better really, it made it very atmospheric, and Paul captured a great video of Foremarke coming past in the snow with the first train of the day, which hopefully we can share with you!

It was not an ideal day to be doing outside work, but there was a buckeye training course pencilled in for today, and everyone dutifully turned up regardless, well wrapped up!

This was mainly a loco department affair with David, David and Bryony in fireman training and Chris as their assessor, but our own Bob was instructor, and I gate-crashed too as qualifying as a ground shunter has been on my list of things to do since passing out as guard, and it seemed like a good idea to tag along and get one step closer. We did what we could practising raising and lowering the buckeye coupling in the works but we had to venture outside to have a go at coupling and uncoupling. Yank the chain to release in theory, but not as easy as it sounds! We got the hang of it in the end, but the stream of water from the gutter going down the back of your neck as you leaned under didn't help.

While all that was going on we missed morning tea break, and a visit from former volunteer Ron which Dave captured, sorry we missed you Ron!

Retreating to the shelter of the workshops for the afternoon, it was time to see what else was going on.

With just a small amount of door work left on 34929, CK 16221 is getting most attention now. After cutting the various wooden blocks to size Robert taps them in with a mallet:

While on the coach itself George was out with the undercoat dark grey again, this time on the south end:

Dave had decided he was better off in the workshop than inside 24006 out in the yard and brought some more panelling in to clean up:

Kevin was keeping on top of our stores:

I didn't want to disturb John who was deep in concentration on the milling machine, I think he may have been making up some plates for the locking bolts on doors to engage with:

Meanwhile Phil carried on sorting and cleaning spare light fitting control plates etc. another batch arrived onto the painting trestles later for painting and return to spares storage:

It was more or less as cold in the barn as it was outside, but that didn't deter the dirty gang from continuing the dismantling and overhaul of the pair of bogies on the jack road:

In fact the only properly warm place was upholstery, where they were taking a break from bubble car seats to do some tests for the RBr seating for when the time comes:

One chair partially recovered, looking very neat:

Whilst there's still a reaosnable number of jobs to do on 34929 they're all bits here and there so it's sometimes difficult to get too much done without impacting on other things. Dave did a bit more lining out:

While I carried on with the lettering, giving the thin black outline to the number painted last week (thanks to Dave for the photo), and also labelled the guard's door: