Thursday 13th - A beautiful day

It might have been very cold at times, but no denying that it really was a beautiful day, and when it came to working in the Barn and the Santa rake, it was warmer out than in !

Frost-coated sleepers, a blue sky and a hazy escarpment - the view from the station foot crossing.

Beginning with some of Wednesday's work, the roof canvas on the Mink A van has been trimmed and battened down. The heavy metal curved end sections have also been put on.

The view from the mezzanine (Photo: Nick)

The north end corridor slider is also now in the process of being sanded and primed, with a coat of oxide on the outer metal side.

A double effort to remove all the old varnish from a vestibule access door from CK 16221. It took concentrated work getting these cleaned up, hence Dave joining Bob for this job.

Moving into the Barn to find RBr 1672 now up on the jacks to allow access for the repair work underneath. (Photo: Nick)

Gerry moves stuff out of the way to make ready the access to the coach, and gets the heater in the foreground going. (Photo: Nick)

In addition to the battery box, the gas bottle cupboard has also been cleared to improve access.

In the corridor Gerry is steadily removing the floor. It looks like quite a bit of repair work for Nick, Gerry and Bryan to do, and I was later informed that it could be three weeks before the job will be completed and the jacks free'd up ready for the final work on BSK 34929.

BSK 34929 will still be shunted out but may go over the pit to allow some underframe work to be done. Meanwhile, it's the last day to get all the painting and related work finished in the Paintshop. The repainted metal base has been put back underneath the guards seat and Phil is tidying up the surround with some grey undercoat. Nobody will see this, but at least we will know that all is neat and tidy. The seat will be put back first thing on Saturday before the shunt.

Both Jeff and Phil then went round the coach doing some further snagging.

So, that's it at long last. The stabilizing props were removed, battery charger unplugged and everything else cleared away ready for 34929 to be shunted out on Saturday.

In the quiet of the Mess Room, Paul extracts all the Indoor Gang's tasks from the Condition Survey spreadsheet. There are quite a few things to do.

Over to the Santa Rake which is now in Platform 2, having been previously brought down from Toddington. Dennis stripped out the Christmas decorations in RMB 1876.

All the coaches will need a vacuum throughout to remove the subsequent scatterings of tinsel. Paul is busy doing this in the preceding coach, CK 16195.

At the north end of the coach Roger is repairing one of the droplight catches which has worked loose.

Alan is checking that the door lock striker plates are secure.

Another job in our long list is to install new heaters in the disabled compartment in BCK 21092. Rex is creating the necessary space in both walls.

The Malvern side wall.

The next job is to clean up the metal covers. When completed these were put on the Paintshop trestles ready for a coating of silver Hammerite on both sides.

One of many jobs for me was filling the primed recess on the side of 21092 where old filler had broken away. Being so cold in the Barn it took some time for the successive layers of filler to harden, but by the end of the day all the sanding down was completed, the area wiped down with thinners, and then patch painted in GWR Brown.