13th/14th/15th - Toddington-Winchcombe-Toddington

 A busy few days at the railway for me, starting off Wednesday evening at Toddington, for another riveting session on the tank wagon. Always tricky to take photos of this activity as it all has to happen fairly quickly while the rivet's still hot enough, and I was the middle bit of the process! But here's Mark on the BBQ cooking the next rivet up:

You heat until the surface of the rivet starts to 'boil' then a shout of "Ready!", I pick the rivet up and shove it in the hole, then Mark and Ian come in with the jammer from below and the rivet gun from above:

We decided to focus on the easier outer ones this time, so made great progress, 46 rivets in 2 hours or so we thought wasn't bad at all. Apart from a couple of awkward ones requiring a little more thought, that's all the outer ones done now. Still plenty to do inside though.

No sooner had we finished Greg turned up and promptly slapped some green primer on them, thanks Greg!

While with the last of the light Mark and I got the steam cleaner out and had some fun took all the lichen and verdigris off the Macaw, which is now almost ready to see some paint:

To Thursday then, and the early starters first, Dave declared it was time for a vacuum up, with the prep on the bubble car nearly finished, and Aland and Geoff were looking at filling a hole in the floor of a 3rd rake coach:

My project for the day was the big noticeboard for the entrance at Cheltenham. The times are on a separate board cut from a recycled redundant plastic timetable board, lettering designed on the computer (carefully font matched to GWR styles), printed out and chalk dusted on the back before going over the lines with a pencil to leave an imprint:

Into the workshop for a break to find a worker and a supervisor! Robert was painting some heating grills while Dave was supposedly cleaning up luggage racks, I guess both for 16221:

Inside the coach, Bob got the satisfying job of applying the first coat of varnish on the new panelling along the corridor:

2-3 more coats and it will really gleam!

Bryan and Gerry continued the good work in pulling apart the RBr:

Paul was delighted to be caught vacuuming in 4986(?) out in the yard:

Just one on the Toad today, Gerry again on the angle grinder:

And a well earned tea at the end of the day, he'll be lucky if he's allowed in the house for a shower, it might be the hose for you Gerry!

Keeping much cleaner was Ian, who spent most of the day in the office, either in meetings or doing admin. There's a lot more to being Head of Department than (trying to!) tell us what to do!

This was as far as I got with my noticeboard today, still to add GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY along the top, some more script lettering to explain about diesel/DMU running in the bottom, and finish the white outer moulding. Note the printed Fares sign, carefully designed to match GWR style, layout and typeface:

And finally Friday, back at Toddington for some more wagon work. The gala's not far away! In fact I was so focussed on what I was doing that I forgot to take any photos until the end of the day, when I'd taken another batch of planks out of the Macaw and got most of one side in undercoat grey:

Rather unthoughtfully someone parked an engine just out of shot on the left blocking my light! It is all 9nearly) the same colour in reality, although it turned out the new batch of dark grey undercoat I switched to half way along is a slightly different shade.

Speaking of the gala, on Thursday we were excited to announce our fourth and final guest for the gala, 92203 Black Prince, making a very welcome return after being resident here at the GWSR until about 10 years ago. Since then it moved to the North Norfolk Railway and this will be the first time it's left their metals since they bought it.

Dave was particularly excited, and dug out some old pictures from 2009:

Thanks Dave, wish the ballast train I guarded the other month had that good a motive power!

This really is an event not to be missed, with 9 locos in steam, an intense timetable with non-stop expresses, goods trains, shunting demos, the lot. 3-5th June, you can pre-book tickets here.