Saturday 4th - New recruits

 We had 2 new starters today, husband and wife team Laura and Simon, and they both got stuck straight in. Laura is joining upholstery, and was soon given a seat base to dismantle. Here John is showing her all the different upholstery patterns:

Meanwhile Simon joins the woodwork team and he too was given plenty to do, here fitting the fire extinguisher by the guards compartment: 

Welcome to you both!

Sticking with 34929, a momentous occasion when the last door had its lock fitted by Robert and Ben, several test slams later and it was a success:

All that's left to do is drill the hole and fit the plate for the locking plate. I say "all", Robert went to mark it up in the afternoon and found the position is such that the capping strip will have to come off again to necessitate this as the brass plate overlaps the metal and isn't restricted to the wood section. As ever with this coach, 2 steps forward and 1 back.

Moving onto CK 16221, George was onto secondary filling after undercoating last week showed up a few bits where more was needed. Inside Paul was sorting out a large selection of wooden trim sections, these will be cleaned up and varnished where they're in good enough condition:

Although it was rather chilly we braved the cold to do our duty and wave at the passengers. Topping and tailing for the duration of winter while cutting slip repairs go on south of the bridge at Winchcombe:

Also braving the cold was Paul and Richard on the Toad, here Paul is knocking out bolts that hold the floor planks in:

And the dirty gang continuing the overhaul on the bogies on the jack road - Phil propped up by broom!

John found a novel way of keeping warm with the blowtorch out the heat a punch up to put some holes in this canvas:

While Robert had rigged up a heater in 24006 in the yard which made sanding down the last compartment ceiling ready for painting more tolerable:

Dave was on a mission to find some spare bits of wood that were missing from their collection for the SK, I'm not sure how successful it was in the end:

I failed to take a single photo of what I was doing, but for the record I did a bit more lining out on 34929, painted a few planks for the Mink then gave a second coat to all the white lettering so that's my bit virtually done. Paul caught me on the sign-writing though:

A relatively early finish for some of us, but it was still getting dark as the penultimate train departed back to Toddington: