Saturday 29th - On schedule

Another busy day with all of us rushing around trying to get everything done that needs to be by March 5th.

The woodwork team have a large assortment of panels to replace in the running rakes, and obviously it would be far too easy if the same components were the same size on every door. Here the marking gauge is out to trim this one to an exact fit:

Also in the woodwork shop today was John doing some turning, we have several perfectly good files and chisels that are without handles, so that was his job today:

The dirty gang's main job for today was to do the bogie change on BCK 21092 now that its wheelsets are back from re-turning. First a quick check on the axleboxes:

And then it was time for the swap itself, F1 style, the aim was to do it all in 2 hours before the RBr had to be back in the air for its gas inspection. So the RBr had to be lowered onto its bogies, shunted out, 21092 brought in, raised off its accommodation bogies, the bogies swapped round, lowered down, and then finally swap the RBr back in again and up.

It all seemed to go like clockwork from where I was spectating, so well done them!

Just Paul on the Mink today, finishing off painting the roof:

Before priming the backs of the second set of doors:

Upholstery too were very busy today, making use of the hoist to lower down some replacement bits for, I think, SK 24929 (it was an SK at any rate)

It was a bit of a squeeze but they managed to get it all in:

Later on they were back inside, as Jenny pointed out, the women working hard while the men stood gossiping! Paul having popped in for a chat:

He too was working hard along with Dennis washing the platform side of the maroon set:

While he was there Paul also sent me a picture of the slip works south of the road bridge, they seem to be coming along well:

Dave was making an enormous racket sanding down various lumps of wood, I couldn't shout load enough to ask whether they were from 24006 or 19195!

And so onto our quick job in the paintshop, Dave started the morning high up with the etch primer on the roof:

Later moving on to the last couple of bits of filling and sanding when Bob took over on the roof, undercoating all along the Malvern side.

Michael undercoated the end, and was very  pleased with the result!

While Pam helped me undercoat the Cotswold side doing window frames:

Such that by the end of the day, it looked like this, all undercoated:

We're on schedule to get this all done by the end of February as I think it's required for the race trains.

It's often said that a gym membership is not required in C&W with all the manual labour involved, but on the other hand trying to stay on a diet is virtually impossible too! As well as Paul's usual excellent supply of cakes it was both Ian's and my birthdays, so no one went hungry at teatime!

Lastly, apologies for the slight delay in posting, but I was out all day yesterday at the great Central Railway's Winter gala, so here's a few pictures of that, the highlights were of coure the busy nature of the whole event with full use of the double track, and the 2 goods trains they had out, the van train and the windcutter mineral opens, very nice!