Tuesday 1st - A hive of activity

 The first day of the new month and the title says it all as we had a very good turnout.

However, firstly the photo that was missed out from Saturday's posting with my photo of Alex undercoating the Cotswold side of TSO 5042.

Now on to today, and it was all go to get the Malvern side completely undercoated. Working top down as always, at times there were as many as five of us all doing different areas and working around each other, including Bob undercoating the side of the roof.

Returning briefly to the Cotswold side, on Saturday Alex had concentrated on the coach side, leaving the door frames and edges. Richard completed these before moving round to join the others and begin the window painting.

Stu did the top brown panel along the whole side.

Maurice got going on the cream panels.

Most of the roof can be reached either from a ladder or a scaffold tower, leaving just the centre section requiring full access using the safety wire. Phil got going with this and soon had the final bit of undercoating completed.

Other than Richard finishing off the door and frame edges, Bob had exclusive access to the Cotswold side of the roof and completed the roof undercoating. He later worked around us on the Malvern side and got the top coating done there. A brilliant effort!

With the Malvern side of the north corridor end undercoated on Saturday, Tony did the Cotswold side. This just left the area over the connection, which will need the use of the scaffold tower.

Roger continued his work at the south end, initially filing down some old broken screws on the connection where the rubbing plate had come away.

After some more cleaning up he undercoated the Malvern side of the connection.

I finished off the day by painting the two main brown panels. Overall the team did an brilliant job and another major goal reached. On Thursday we start top coating the sides. Still a way to go yet so we can't hang about. 

The other major painting going on in the Paintshop involves the Mink A van doors. The second pair were undercoated in the morning.

When the undercoating had dried Richard swapped the doors over, so that the first pair could receive the lovely dark GW Grey top coat on their reverse side. The associated planking on the other trestle was also done.

Meanwhile Keith was having a veritable field day of painting and varnishing, intially undercoating the new cleaning materials cupboard for BSO 9000. It was then on with varnishing a huge number of items from CK 16221. There is still a pile of beading for staining and varnishing left to do.

Four of the above frames were made by Dave E. from the Woodwork Team and will be painted yellow. These will provide a more permanent means of protecting open coach doorways, where the door has been removed but is not used for access, and as such it would be too easy to step back into the void. CK 16221's Malvern side centre doorway is currently protected with some temporary lengths of wood nailed to the doorframe - although secure, these new frames will obviously be a lot better.

Dave gives the sanded metal side of the south end corridor slider from 16221 a coat of red oxide.

All the existing blind covers have been removed from 16221's compartments, cleaned up and revarnished. However no location identity had been attached to any of them. However this was soon rectified by Dave who managed to match them up with their respective compartments.

This cover having been correctly relocated may as well be refitted as the varnishing has been completed. All the varnished items from the trestles will in fact have a final coating once back in place and general revarnishing inside the coach begins.

Panel sanding along the corridor, vestibules, and compartments (where not formica) has continued steadily, and the corridor now looks quite different.

With his painting session finished, Tony reverted to sanding again, this time the mid corridor slider which separates the first and second class sections of the CK. The individual parts of the window frame were taken out so that each could be properly cleaned up without damaging the glass.

(Photo : Russ)  The repaired section of the floor in RMB 1808 with a fresh coat of grey floor paint. An improvement Russ made, which can be seen in both this and the following two photos, was to apply sealant to the division between the wood floor panels. This will prevent water access when the floor is washed.

(Photos : Russ) 

We are getting through rags amazingly quickly at the moment. I no sooner refill the Paintshop box and it's time to cut yet more. Thankfully we have a large supply of old sheets, pillow cases, towels, shirts, etc, etc. I wonder how long this lot will last?

All this internal activity was keeping us very busy, while outside it was another beautiful day. The open coaches and BCK 21092 await further attention as we gradually plough through our busy winter maintenance programme.