Saturday 12th - A Landmark Point

Let's get straight to the highlight of the day, the beginning of the final fitting out of the compartments in CK16221! The upholstery team decided today was the day to start, the the upholstered first class seat sections were finally brought out of storage after some 10 years:

Because this coach has had several false starts, the finished seats have been sitting around all done taking up space for a very long time.

The seat backs are very heavy and required several pairs of hands to manhandle them inside, but once they were, actually fitting them was a bit of a spectator sport...

And in! It looks very smart alongside the shiny new varnished veneer:

Simon was also fitting major components, luggage racks have been going in too:

Earlier in the day he was assembling the small side tables - components having been varnished now:

Other CK activity today saw Dave fitting some of the trimming and beading into the loo compartment, and Steve was attaching the fittings for the French bolt on the end corridor connection door:

Before the upholsterers were heaving heavy seats around rocking the coach around I also quickly managed to do the shading on 'Charlotte' on the Malvern side, so now both names are complete:

Also on the signwriting front was Pam continuing with our new signs:

With a much better set-up than last time, Robert very cleverly adapting one of our trestles to become an easel. A comfortable position is just as important as everything else when it comes to signwriting.

Later on in the day Robert started on the construction of the second set of doors for the P'way Vanfit:

On the vehicle itself Maurice and Paul did a cracking job flexacryling the whole roof:

And from their view:

Meanwhile I started measuring up timber requirements for the Mogo, which raised an interesting question. Mogos had end doors for loading cars into, but looking at drawings, as built photos photos from later on in service and other preserved vehicles, our seems unique in having split end doors:

Anyone know what that's all about? One other anomaly is that although our is a later diagram where plywood was used with post-war shortages, the end doors were still planked, so we will seek to do this this time round, although with the unusual double folding doors.

Looking at the roof I think we might be able to leave that alone apart from some minor repairs and maybe a new canvas, although I think we'll remove that wasps' nest too!

We also had a train to watch today, hurrah! Foremarke Hall was on duty, ferrying race goers to Cheltenham. In the middle of the day, rather than have a loco in steam and staff sat around waiting we run a lunchtime Fish & Chip service, and here it is coming back:

Ainsley also had to catch the train at some point to effect a door repair, not sure what on, but here he is collecting the bits required:

Ken here checking out the gutter level and how it interacts with the new ends on the RBr:

Speaking of new ends, I got roped into helping Dave dig out the second pair of new end pressings:

It was a close run thing but we did manage to come back with one for each side rather than 2 identical ones!

It was just Andy from the dirty gang today soldiering on with the bogies for the RBr, now on the through road in the barn:

Later on there was another DA valve to service, Phil helped give it a big heave-ho with the spanner:

And after it was sorted out a splash of paint:

Dave was also splashing the paint about, priming the new side skirt panels for the RBr where we've had to cut it all away to replace the cross bearers:

On the workshop improvements side John was machining up a guide tool to help with the band saw out of a chunk of aluminium:

After a lot of head-scratching, plan D apparently was the one!

And just to finish off, we hung around to watch Foremarke bring a train load of merry racegoers back to Toddington and onward travel in the last of the light:

Oh, I almost forgot, couple of blog announcements. Firstly, if you haven't spotted, the somewhat moribound Steam Dept blog has sprung back into life under new management. And secondly, we now have a Facebook page dedicated to our wagon activities. Don't worry if you don't do Facebook, nothing will stop being posted here, it's just an additional outlet to help us reach more people and join in with the growing wagon group community out there around different railways.