Thursday 3rd - Shuntitis

It was an odd sort of day, with the works virtually empty but still plenty to do. An early morning view outside the yard to see what state things were in after yesterday's all day shunt: 

It turned into another all day shuntathon, with Ian driving both the 03 and 04 (if we painted the 03 black and the 04 green and sent the former back to Toddington, do we think anyone would notice?...)

On the left, Dennis descends having checked the water pipes for leaks on the RBr.

Inside, Richard II polished up a soldered copper pipe joint to go in:

Back outside, here's most of the third rake being pulled out:

Then into the north yard to grab a couple more coaches:

With half the third rake siding empty, and the P'way train and demo goods train at Toddington, this part of the yard was looking unusually empty:

It was just Dave and Robert on the CK today, really the only coach we have in the works at the moment with RBr work pending project planning, and the paintshop empty. They were figuring out how to do the various Formica panels. The problem is not all Formica is the same, we seem to have 2 different shades, so it's a case of seeing what panels we've got and working out fi they can neatly be turned into something else:

Also a chance to see the new door barriers in place:

TK 24006 saw quite a lot of work today, I found Geoff on the pillar drill with some window sections:

And followed him to the coach for fitting, where Alan was involved too, and later Roger (although I missed a photo of him)

 

Bob was also working his magic with the white ceilings which really brightens the coach up:

I went up to photograph Jeff and Phil dealing with the last of the sticky tape on the windows, only to find them on their way back and exchanging gossip with Bob, who was pulling levers today:

Whilst more coaches went by...

Paul and Dennis sit down for a well earned break with the maroon set now all ready to go up to Toddington on Saturday, I wouldn't drink that though Paul!

One last shot of the shunters at work, they really did work hard today, even working completely through tea breaks!

Well done chaps, hopefully not too much more to do now, there were complaints that the gang were suffering from a severe bout of shuntitis at the end of the day.

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And just to finish off, a couple of pictures of progress at Toddington on the GWR water tank the night before. 

Mark had his new favourite toy, the mag drill, out again drilling holes in the plate-work ready for riveting:

Below the solebar I got the gloss black out:

And Greg joined us to clean up and prime the 4 tie bars:

They mostly came up fairly well, but the nuts are seized on and the threads are pretty knackered, so we'll probably have to chop those ends off and replace with new material.