Saturday 22nd - A steady production line and more gala preparation

As the post title says, it certainly feels like that in the Paintshop as the trestles are cleared and steadily filled up again with items from both the Woodshop and Workshop, but it's all good stuff and shows both the ingenuity and speed at which things seem to be produced in C&W.

The painting up of the new internal signs for the Works continues with Maurice now taking on the job. 

 

The centre panel on this one turned out to be a little rough when undercoated, but a light sand with 240 paper sorted it and I later added another layer of brown undercoat. It should then be fine when top coated.

Whilst this was going on Simon appeared with yet another.

 Into the Woodshop to find him just finishing off the final one.

When it comes to a production line, our Upholstery team are masters at generating a seemingly endless flow of refurbished goodies. The first class seating for BCK 21092 really is just that - first class! Jenny assists Laura with the creation of a new cushion cover.

On returning later Laura was busy sewing the new cover and well on the way to completing this cushion.

 I missed John  working on this part reconstructed seat back.

 

In the Workshop Ken is making another new clamp for a toilet waste pipe for CK 16221. The previous one is painted up ready for fitting.

 

The resulting parts in the Paintshop ready for a coat of red oxide and then paint.
 

Some of the luggage racks for 16221 need reconstructing. Dave has attached a new section of netting to this one, but the only way to make it fit was to have it at a length that was a bit short. An extra piece will be attached from a roll that we have in stock.

With the flooring work in 16221 completed, Steve began his day laying sheets and blankets to protect the new marmoleum and carpet. Much of the postponed internal refitting could now be done, beginning with the corridor heater covers. The small electric heaters on the compartment walls (which are not used) will remain in brown, rather than painted in silver Hammerite as is normally done for radiators and heating pipework.

With the first top coat on the Malvern side of the coach completed, time to begin the second, beginning with the windows. George lightly sands this frame to provide a key.

We aren't out of the mire yet with the quarter doors for RBr 1675. Robert's response to my query about how it was going for this door wasn't optimistic. So one of the two possible replacements may still end up being used.

The final door for 1675, now fully cleaned up and given a base coat of light grey, is ready for storage in the Workshop rack until the Door team can begin reconstruction.

 

In the Barn the two Andys were continuing the maintenance of this bogie.

Meanwhile preparation for the weekend gala continues with Dennis watering up the 3rd Rake coaches and our lobby being cleared ready for our visitors. Tuesday and Thursday will see a bout of tidying up and vacuuming, and the various display items, sandwich boards, direction arrows, etc brought out of storage once again.

While for news of the goods train that will be running, over to Alex.

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Friday was the day of the big shunt to put everything together. Ben and Tom from the loco department did the lion's share of the shunting, most of it in the pouring rain so a massive well done for that. By the time I turned up after work to help there wasn't too much left to do. The main task was to go down to Winchcombe to pick up the Toad and the Mink A to add to the consist. Seeing as there was a fire and drive out today we decided it would be much more fun to use the duty steam loco rather than an 04, and here's Foremarke Hall part-way in the barn, photo taken by James, who kindly turned up to pull levers for us:

All hooked up, our short train posed in the station, next to the Fruit C it all looked rather good!

As I was busy traipsing around on the ground in the rain waiving my arms around for the final few moves I didn't get any more photos on Friday, but it was such grim weather it wasn't really worth it! Tempting as it was to do a brake test by lamp signals we decided to save that for another day, and I toddled off to a board meeting and then the pub.

Saturday was much better weather for faffing around with wagons outside, and we could see what we'd done now!

13 in total, we're pretty proud of that.

Clive and I had 4 wagons we needed to do annual axle box exams on before he could sign off the paperwork, so we set to, working our way through: 

It was a good vantage point to watch trains too, so some slightly different angles to the standard shots seen on this blog:

One other problem to resolve was the vacuum gauge on the Toad. It was only reading 8 when it should have been 25 yesterday. Happily the loco department have ways and means and a couple of hours later Steve had sorted it out and recalibrated it, complete with sticker and certificate:

Thanks Steve! He also very kindly started up the shunter so we could get that brake test done, which after a bit of persuading with one or two wagons was all completed successfully.

Another shot you can't often get, Foremarke approaches Toddington whilst the Cl.47 gets ready to come on the back to top and tail to Broadway, using the South crossover as we were in the way on siding 1:

And here hopefully a final video (if it works) captured by Mark on duty at the station at Toddington of Foremarke pushing our completed train into the North siding ready for next weekend:

Come visit next weekend to see and maybe ride on our goods train, the more popular it is the more we can justify doing wagons! :)