Thursday 11th - Another brilliant creation

Another busy C&W day with our metalwork team in to boost the attendance. They will be back to Wednesday next week.

Firstly a photo from Wednesday taken in the Upholstery shop by Dave H. Jenny holds up a seat back for a three seat unit from the Bubblecar 55003.  New member Stephen and Dave repaired the frame, and then Stephen completely replaced the outside back panel.  As John H. (Head of Upholstery) says, it's a pity most of what we do gets covered up!

Beginning Thursday's activities with the Indoor Gang, both Alan and Roger completed the work in the new disabled compartment in BSK 34929. Alan fits the lock keyhole cap on the south end sliding door.

Alan and Roger then attached the little L-shaped brackets securing the table legs to the floor. Roger had to make some minor adjustments to the wall fitting for this table.

It was then into SK 25341 to remove the protective film of Windowlene from the windows (put on earlier this year to reduce the fading affect of the sun on the moquette). This coach will be added to the 3rd Rake on the Malvern side of the yard., which is being used for this year's Santa specials as almost all the coaches are compartmented.

Meanwhile Dennis had been through all the 3rd Rake coaches attaching "Out of use" notices to the toilet doors. With embankment repairs being done for the next few months in the cutting approaching the tunnel, Santa trains will be limited to the short 3 miles run between Toddington and Winchcombe.

Another job that has been waiting in the wings for the metalwork team is to fix bases to these metal posts, which will be used instead of the metal stakes to mark out the public viewing area at the Barn entrance during galas. Nick sets up the base sections for this one.

These will be so much better than the stakes, which can be very difficult to bang into the hard ground.

Wow, what's this Bryan and Rex are trying out?

It turns out to be another very useful tool created by the metalwork/engineering team for  lowering and raising the very heavy vacuum cylinders. A completely successful trial and great improvement on the way we used to have to do this job, well done chaps!

The new tool now coated in oxide and ready for the Paintshop.

Now up to the mezzanine to the Electrical Team's den, where Richard is working on a faulty light fixing from a 3rd Rake coach, while Steve is attaching more LED units to the large heat sink plates.

Richard has found the necessary replacement part in the plastic unit for fitting to the large metal unit on the bench.

In the Barn John is applying a black paint patch to allow numbering to the ends of the two bogies that were from underneath the old Loco Dept Mess Coach, which has been sold. As the coach will be static in its new location we were allowed to replace the bogies with one's we no longer required.

Jeff, C&W's Finance Manager, holds a meeting with Nick, Head of Metalwork, to discuss the new budget allocation for that team. It's good to have a budget again now we are slowly recovering from the Pandemic restrictions and our trains are once again catering for good numbers of passengers, but it will be a while yet before we are back to 2019 allowances.

Finally back to the Paintshop and good progress with the Malvern side of BSK 34929. With the top line yellow section completed on most of this side, Phil applies the low tack tape to the south end of the coach to enable the painting of the lower black section.

Down below at the north end Jeff tapes up for the middle black section of the lower line, the outer yellow sections being done on Tuesday.

Tape in place, so on with the black gloss. Unlike the yellow, one coat of this will be sufficient.

Bottom line done, so on to the top line taping. Jeff then proceeded to get the lower black section of this line painted.

Job done, so he now very carefully removes the two lines of tape so as not to remove any underlying top coat. I was busy with the guards door entrance on the Cotswold side, so when later joining Jeff, I was only able to get about a third of the lower line painted black. We'll be back to all this on Saturday.