Thursday 18th - A new rake is formed

It was a very busy day in the yard with the setting up of the Santa Specials rake of compartment coaches only. Neil, Kevin and Andy D. brought the Maroon Rake down from Toddington behind 37215., with Mike B. as guard.

With Andy T. guiding from within the last coach, the rake is steadily reversed into the headshunt. The 3rd Rake had already been pulled out of its siding on the right of the main line.

 

It was then a case of separating out the corridor coaches from the Maroon Rake to add to those of the 3rd Rake. All sounds easy when written in a sentence, but the reality is very different and involved both the Class 37 and our 03, and a lot of shunting. Our shunters for the day were Andy T., Clive, and Tony B. , with Ian on the 03.

 

It was now well past 2 p.m. With 37215 now back on the main line, the 03 prepares to pull the newly formed rake back out to the station.

With the new rake now on its way to Toddington behind 37215, the remains of the 3rd Rake and the opens from the Maroon Rake have been pushed back into the 3rd Rake siding.

 

With Paul away, it was just Dennis today from the 3rd Rake Maintenance team. SO 4798 has been unused for some time at the end of the 3rd Rake siding and now had an infestation of cluster flies. A good spray around will hopefully get rid of most of these.

 The toilet ceiling was also down. This coach is on the refurbishment list.

 

Alan and Geoff from the Indoor Gang are busy adding more new internal window frames in the corridor of TK 24006. Alan is tapping one of the holes.

Now attaching one of the frame sections. Some of the windows were tapped ready with the bolts inserted part way - a good way of safely storing these.

 A completed window with new wood sections, each having had two coats of varnish.

Both Dave and Robert, the owners of 24006, were in today. Dave is depositing a number of underseat grills to be cleaned up and painted in Silver Hammerite. A job for this coming Saturday. Later in the day, while enjoying the afternoon tea break, they were perusing the marmoleum catalogue. It will be quite sometime before a new covering of marmoleum is put down, but it's nice to have an idea of what there is available.

Up on the mezzanine Steve is creating some more LED lighting. Richards I and II, also from the Electrics Team, were busy on the coaches in the yard but unfortunately I missed them.

Meanwhile, also part of this team, Phil is sorting out more light fittings for adding to our general store of these. There are now two piles of these on the Paintshop trestles ready for cleaning up and painting.

More work on the bogies taken from underneath the recently departed Loco Mess Coach "Tina". Bob is busy loosening bolts ready for the extraction of the wheelsets.

John is meanwhile cleaning up the wheel treads to assess their state. 

On to the progress with BSK 34929, and something that is very annoying to find under the topcoat - a few bubbles! Jeff carefully investigates. It's quite sometime since the initial stages of bodyside preparation were done, so could it be some rust coming through? The answer was most definitely no - all four places simply showed clean metal with some filler and initial paint layers, so why the bubbles appeared is a mystery. Repairs were made, and as a second top coat has to be done, these will disappear.

 

Then over to the Malvern side to get the final bits of lining out done. This section of line still needed the gloss black

 Bob K. begins second top coating the south half of the Cotswold side.

Jeff returns to the areas on the Cotswold side where the filler has now set and carefully sands each place.

Back to the Malvern side where Phil, having painted the lower line first, is adding yellow to the top line. This panel was painted two days before and was the final bit of top coating on this side.

 

Jeff adding black to his taped line ends the posting for the day.