Saturday 18th - A new toy

With the mayhem of the race trains over for another year, it was back to an ordinary day today, for the railway and for me, it was nice just to have a day of standard C&W work and not so busy I couldn't even do the blog!

The first ECS of the day and we all trooped out to see the new toy, 75014 'Braveheart' was out for its first revenue earning day on our railway:

It's visiting us from the Paignton & Dartmouth railway and staying for the Steam Gala 12-14th May.

First off, there was an RBr project meeting to discuss progress between the metal workers, wood workers, electrics and others:

Nick looks out from a window repair in progress!

Meanwhile at the North end Ken was working on preparing the end to refit the corridor connection:

Simon carried on with the floor bearers:

The other main project at the moment is FK 13329 and there were several bodie son this today filling and sanding; Dave:

Pam:

Jeff:

And Phil:

It's definitely making progress and hopefully not long before we can get some paint on some sections of this.

A quick dash outside to see Braveheart return, this time facing the right way:

And then upstairs to see how upholstery were getting on with the seats for 4867. Jenny and John cutting and fitting the fabric:

Laura prepares another back, with a completed piece in the foreground:

We really are indulging this standard coach with first class seating!

Back down to the workshop and Dennis was sorting out some electrical bits and bobs:

On the lathe John was sorting out the rather knackered bolts holding the north end door hinges on the Mogo, thanks John!

On the wagon itself Maurice spent most of the day painting bolt heads, Paul and I were amused to see up up on the scaffold leaning down to paint some:

The main task for today was to trial fit the last pair of doors, on the North end. Robert captured Paul and I at work:

The other 3 pairs of doors went on like a dream, with only a minor bit of easy adjustment needed. Not so here, and we spent most of the afternoon nudging things this way and that, trying to figure out what wasn't right. Eventually we got there though, Robert captured Paul checking the close:

We think the frame must be a bit out of square this end as all the doors were perfectly square, but didn't fit. Once we'd finally established what adjustments we wanted to make we marked up and Robert did the honours once we'd taken them off again:

We even got them primed by the end of the day:

The big vacuum up at the end of the day, an awful lot of pink dust around at the moment:

And the final photo on the way out, the Friends of Winchcombe team's two storage wagons finally back in place in the bay platform, I had nipped out and done a quick repair on a sprung plank on the LNWR van just before I left