Tuesday 31st - This had to be the biggest yet

An interesting day and certainly one to burn off all the lovely irresistible goodies that regularly appear in the Mess Room, but more on that later. In the meantime we were kept busy on a number of fronts.

Beginning with TSO 4763 where the panels and heating pipe covers under the tables needed a repaint. All the tables are being taken off as most of the screws fixing them are rusty. Keith looks on as Richard concentrates on this bay.

In the central compartment, having painted the plyboard panel in Flint Grey, Stu brushes onto the heating pipe cover a coat of silver Hammerite. The Flint Grey (same as we use on our roofs) goes well with the Hammerite and red Chainlink moquette.

In his bay Richard scrapes any peeling paint off the plyboard before giving it a light sand and then adding the paint.

Alex kept reminding me that there is a rusty patch by the Malvern side guards door on BSO 9000. While Richard made a start on sorting out that, I had a look round the rest of the coach - and, oh dear. This is the righthand side of the Malvern side south door. I had a good go with a scraper to remove the flakey paint.

With the initial area sanded, Richard moved on to this and then coated both his areas in oxide.

The Cotswold side also had two areas of raised paint, which I cleaned up and coated in oxide. Hopefully the next day David A. will be able to fill and sand all these, and if time permits add undercoat. Although the Cotswold side guards door still has to be reinstated, we don't want any paintwork issues holding up progress with 9000.

Next over to the Maroon Rake to see how Ian was getting on with the internal window cleaning. I found him in CK 16195 making good progress. There is a lot to do in both rakes, so any help we can give Paul W. and Dennis I'm sure will be much appreciated.

While there a quick photo of one of the repaired side panels reinstated by our Upholstery team.

On to RBr 1675 progress, with David D. in the early stages of making new battery boxes.

Derek is creating more edge sections for the floor.

Compartment door 8 from TK 24006 was giving owner Dave H. problems in that handle refused to come out. However Keith solved it and as such the door is now ready for sanding to remove all the old faded varnish.

It's lovely to see how well these doors have come up. Keith adds varnish to the previous one sanded down.

And the one prior to that has had at least two coats of varnish. Another one should complete the job.

Pam adds the finishing touches to "her" fire buckets. She is determined that when they are returned to the station they will look as good as possible. The "Hooton Trolley" plaque was also given more varnish (an email today from Roger in the Cleaning Team has indicated that the trolley is being prepared ready for the plaque).

[Photo : Paul E.]  The Mogo is also progressing rapidly. Maurice and Paul E. were busy with more cleaning up of the framework and then adding more green primer.

 

 [Photo : Paul E.]  The Dark Grey undercoat is now also being added.

In the Woodshop Robert is building the second of the large end doors for the Mogo.

I was fascinated by this very useful tool that is used to create firm right angled joints. The drill bit is put into one of the three holes.

In Robert's words, " The tool I used was a pocket hole jig to make the angled holes specific to the thickness of the wood . Special pocket hole screws are used to lock the wood into the joint."

Finally the big event of the day. A very large wood delivery, yes the whole lorry load and probably the largest that has ever been ordered by C&W, was expected. However it was uncertain whether this would happen on Tuesday or Wednesday. And being what we all are, us "Tuesdays" were quietly hoping it would happen on Wednesday and no doubt the "Wednesdays" were hoping it would be Tuesday. Well, an email in the morning confirmed our "fears" and lo and behold the lorry duly arrived in the middle of our lunch break. We did invite the driver up for a cup of tea while we finished lunch, but he was keen to get it all unloaded.

The planks package was the first to be lowered - thank goodness the lorry had a crane. The massive bundle of plyboard followed.

Everybody looks on anxiously. You could have a field day with a caption competition!

The marine ply being taken off the pile is destined for the Mogo and the rest will be for the floor and wall panelling in RBr 1675. Once again the blue trolley came into its own and saved us numerous journeys.

The other half of the load comprised various types of planking. Some went inside the Works, but most went into the Wagon Team's container. 

Many thanks to Robert for sorting it all out and able to decide what was destined for where. Overall it went very well and a great way to get fit !