Saturday 22nd - Another busy Saturday

Another busy Saturday with Winter maintenance still very much in progress, but plenty of variety elsewhere.

Starting with Upholstery amid their cries of, "Oh no, not us having our teabreak again!". Actually they work hard so it's nice to see Jenny, John and Laura enjoying some time off. 

In the background is the trial seat from RBr 1675, which I thought on Thursday had been finished. In fact it is just a trial fitting as the red chain-link moquette is now running out, so it's likely that the seats will be covered in another design, probably Bournemouth Blue. The team have said that the seat backs are going to be tricky.

Kevin, our hard working stores man, is busy attaching a pot full of markers to one of the Paintshop whiteboards. Markers are always disappearing so having a definite receptacle attached to each board will be a distinct benefit.

In the Woodwork shop Dave is busy making some safety gates for blocking off coach door entrances where the door has been removed. The open doorway on the Malvern side of CK 16221 has been blocked off with some lengths of timber nailed to the door frame, but these gates will be reusable and better.

 

Further along the shop Simon is in the final stages of building a cupboard for cleaning products that will be fitted within the disabled compartment in BSO 9000. This is another item on the long list of requirements following our late November Condition Survey of all our running coaches.The completed cupboard was later bought into the Paintshop for priming and then painting in Executive Light Grey, the colour used in 9000.

The Mink A van rebuild reached another stage with the initial coat of grey Flexacryl beginning to go on to the roof canvas.

Later in the day Paul adds the first top coat to the initial pair of new doors.

During the day Richard and Paul had also been busy completing the second set of doors, which are now ready for priming.

Over the past few weeks John S. has been busy making spacers for the brake block rigging. These have now been completed and placed in the relevant storage area in the Barn.

 Doing a very different job was Phil, busy making rubber seals for toilet cistern valves.

Problems in RMB 1808 in one of the station rakes. Steve busily saws a bad section of flooring. The repair has now been completed ready for some fresh floor paint on Tuesday.

Following on from the previous posting, it looks as though the underframe repairs have been completed as Nick had asked for RBr 1672 to be lowered back down onto its bogies.

 

The buzz of sanders was back again in the Workshop with a lot of effort going into cleaning up more items from CK 16221. Dave sands down the compartment blind covers.

Robert W. extracts nails from another length of beading prior to cleaning it up.

Later in the day, while Robert moved into 16221, owner Clive carried on with the sanding. All the sanded parts gradually made their way down to the Paintshop trestles for fresh coats of varnish.

Finally on to progress with TSO 5042. Bob was back on the roof painting Flexacryl around the vents where roof leakage can occur.

Then it was back to removing all the loose paint on the side of the roof - the Cotswold side is particularly bad.

Although there was plenty of varnishing to be done, the priority was to get the sides of 5042 sanded down and repaired, so for Pam it was a day spent on the Cotswold side windows, topping up what had already been done and then completing the rest.

 

As mentioned in recent posts, water stained and damage veneer is being replaced wherever possible, and this includes the door backs where bad in 5042. Robert is busy planing, while next to him a new door panel and beading is ready to be used.

Having given the panel base a final sanding, Ainsley applies some wood dye.

Then a trial fit on the Cotswold side centre door.

I spent the day continuing the filler repairs to the north half of the Cotswold side, as well as some pad sanding of the top brown panel and gutter. Still much of the latter to do, but with the lower panel repairs completed it was heartening to patch paint it all with brown undercoat. It will still have a full covering of undercoat of course when we do the rest of this side.

Judging by the dirt on the south end corridor sliding door, it's not hard to guess where 5042 was located in the rake!