Saturday 3rd - Back to it

 Nice to be back to writing again, thank you for all the kind comments while we were away.

Starting off with the dirty gang today, it was Andy and Ian in attendance, to shuffle around some bogies. I'm afraid I somewhat lost track of what came from where and destined for what over the last month or so, somewhere in the mix the RBR bogies were included, as well as extracting some good wheelsets from this storage BG. Anyway, today the BG was lifted off whatever bogies it was sitting on:

And the bogies pulled out from underneath it:

Later on from my vantage point cleaning up the last of the rusty Macaw, now all in green primer and ready for undercoating:

Some wagons were pulled out the back road for the BG, now on some other bogies, to be buried behind:

Which left the jack road with two bogies on, which I'm told are the ones for the RBr. Now joined by Ken, they soon got stuck in with the lifting gantry to have a wheelset out and start dismantling:

If our HoD can do it, so can you! It's not the most exciting job keeping on top of the dust, but important to not let it overwhelm us:

Undisturbed by the activity on the adjacent road, Maurice and Paul had a good day on the Toad. Maurice did a good job priming the underside of the veranda roof:

While Paul blacked the Stove inside:

Later on some more step boards were greyed and the benches for inside top-coated in brown.

Outside Paul and Dennis were trying out their new polishing toy:

The picture from a distance with Dennis does show the difference rather well:

The CK saw plenty of activity today as this races towards the finish line, first off Robert had to do some adjustments on this door that was working, but now wasn't:

Happily he sorted it all out, phew!

Simon was on more panelling, first applying wood preserver to the back, then later fitting some more around another doorway:

Steve was showing Dave how to fit the metal door thresholds here, not bad, just a little nudge this way!

Meanwhile Dave started off trying to do a bit more filling and sanding on the Malvern side doors:

 But soon got kicked out as he was in the way of the woodworkers, oh well, let's go watch a train:

Later on he was cleaning up one of the RBr doors on a bench instead, we're trying to get into the habit of cleaning up the door skin before the door team do all their refurbishment on it, so we don't end up with a nicely painted coach until the door is rehung still all grotty with no prep work done:

I know Chris was in the third rake fixing a door issue, I'm not quite sure if this droplight was for that or the RBr:

Dave caught me making a start on doing some of the end lettering on the North end of the CK, having finished de-rusting the Macaw:

And at the other end, George was doing a final pass with the filler:

John and Laura were in Upholstery today, carrying on with the first class seats for the BCK:

In the workshop John was busy making new door guides from lump steel the the milling machine:

You start off with a bigger lump of metal, then make it smaller, then smaller again, then mill it to shape and drill holes, very tidy:

Lastly a small update from Toddington. We've been busy on our Wednesday evenings continuing to tidy up the two coal wagons. I'm afraid I wasn't as good as Dave in taking any pics to post as a catch up, I've only got the one, but I think you'll like it:

As there's nothing really authentic we can do with these livery-wise, we thought it'd be fun to paint them up in local Private Owner liveries, and here's the first one. The plan was just for static display, but now we're looking at them thinking it would be quite nice to make them runners if possible. They're only air-braked at the moment though and need all the usual mechanical exams, so watch this space.

Oh and just before I go, a new blog has joined the railway family, the R and A Trust based at Toddington now have their own blog documenting some of their activities. I've added the link to the sidebar.