Tuesday 5th - A very satisfying day

We had a good little group in today, which included Stu who made a very welcome return after a health issue had kept him away for over a month.

Beginning with Richard back to sanding down on the Malvern side of the Bubblecar. As previously reported special attention is being paid to the bottoms of the window voids where rust has formed, some windows being worse than others. However the bad areas are cleaning up well and will have an application of Kurust.

On the Cotswold side Roger is gradually working his way along and paying particular attention to the door backs and sides, and the door frames. We will be painting these as well as the outside, although the cream window section will just be undercoated as the CDR group wish to use a different cream gloss than the GW Cream that we use on our coaches.

I did quite a bit of emailing during the day with repect to different aspects of our current work as they arose (thank goodness for smart phones!). Several of them were related to the holes in the bodysides of the Bubblecar. While some are obviously related to the guards grab rails, this strange line of 13 holes is a mystery. The normal top grab rail hole can be seen just to the right.

To sum up my email to Tom (in the CDR group) of what we found: -

Malvern side: 

Left of guards door - 4 bolts for grab rails

Right of guards door - top 3 holes had been filled in (not by us - they were painted over), leaving just the bottom one, so the top 3 will need digging out.

Cotswold side:

Left of guards door - 4 holes as there should be

Right of guards door - the long vertical line of holes (13 in all), too near the edge to be of any use as grab rail fixings. 

As for the expected 4 grab rail holes, only 1 exists. The other 3 cannot be seen at all - this may have been a section where George welded in a new piece of sheet metal.

 

**********

 

So some digging out and drilling to do to complete the holes needed for when the grab rails are reinstated.

 

We are making good progress considering the other things such as the Gunpowder van which also need our attention. Bob M., one of our roofers, popped in and said he would be returning on Thursday which means the undercoating of the roof will be started. 

4270 passes with the first return train of the day. Dinmore was hauling the Cheltenham bound train. It's a good job we are behind a fence and not on the platform - the temptation to jump aboard the train and "disappear" for an hour would be too great!

 Moving on to CK 16221 with Ainsley fixing the lock for the Cotswold side north end door.

 Later on Ainsley is assessing the fit of the batten that will fit behind the door frame.

After completing an initial small job, Tony proceeds cleaning up another of the compartment doors from 16221. The lower panel has been removed to clean out any dirt and rubbish. Although in this door there wasn't any of the latter, unlike SK 25451 where we found a veritable "treasure trove" of old tickets, appeal leaflets, buffet car food lists, and even childrens drawings, all from the early 90s, that had been pushed down the window slots in most of the corridor doors.. Two frames of these "treasures" hang in the Paintshop.

Tony then gave the door a thorough sanding and later mounted it on trestles in the Paintshop ready for varnishing. 

A decent day weatherwise so back to the Gunpowder van to continue its repaint. There are still some roof panels to clean up on the Malvern side, so Phil sets to removing all the old flaking paint. 

After the application of some red oxide, he then seals in a number of loose bolts. No doubt these originally connected to an inner wood structure which has long rotted away. The final job will be to apply white undercoat. 

Stu tackles the underframe, following up the wire brushing with an application of Underframe Black gloss. 

I managed to get two thirds of the Cotswold side second top coated on Saturday. Stu does the last two panels and so completes this side. 

Taking a well earned rest after a busy day, Stu and Phil pose for the camera. Just the roof to finish and two ends to add a second coat, and then over to Alex to add the red crosses and signwriting.

Continuing on the freight theme, Maurice is busy removing the old paint from the south end of the Toad brake van.

Just outside the Barn Paul is trimming up one of the newly made concrete blocks. This is to enable the block to be slightly tapered and fit into the relevant ballast box at the base of the van. Note the newly oiled seat has very thoughtfully been protected from the dust.

Another newly created block almost ready to have the shuttering removed.

Looks like a few more blocks to make yet. 

The new blocks in one of the centre boxes. 

Returning later in the day with both Paul and Maurice painting red oxide on to the parts they have cleaned up.

More trestle items for priming, one of which is a headboard, this time brought in by Alex. Alan later joined Roger and helped with the sanding down on Cotswold side of the Bubblecar.

The early job done by Tony was to sand a notice board that Alex had brought up from Cheltenham Racecourse Station. When it came to the back, sanding down reverted to scraping off the paint and gouging the back of the outside moulding, both were very damp and the latter actually rotting. The bad area will need thoroughly drying out and the gouged bit filled before any repainting can be done. Repainting this board is of course all part of Alex's campaign to provide the Railway with good notice boards.

Seeing some of the Santa Experience group by the coach in Platform 1 Bay, I discovered that it is to be used again after all. There will be some work to do inside by the group, while regarding the outside I was asked about whether the paintwork could be smartened up either by washing down or polishing. Knowing the probable result I still did a quick test for the group and as expected washing down removed only a bit of the oxidation of the paintwork, while polishing, though hard work, can produce a passable result. Ideally a full repaint followed by two coats of varnish is what is really wanted, but the problem is fitting it into our busy schedule.

The Class 45 has already disappeared on the final train to Cheltenham, while 4270 starts off for Toddington on its last run of the day.

 

A very pleasant view of the train with the Cotswold escarpment in the distance.

Hard to resist another shot of TSO 5042 in its new paint. It was a joy to do such a trouble free coach after all the hassle we had with BSK 34929.

 Well done Tony! A quick vac round to get rid of the sanding dust after a busy day.