Tuesday 30th - How do you follow that?!

Gosh, yes, how do you follow Alex's excellent posting for Saturday? It certainly had a high viewing count.

So, back down to earth.

Just seven of us in today, but we made some good progress despite the low attendance.

We arrived to hear that we have yet another broken droplight, this time on TSO 4614. The coach had been brought down from Toddington the day before. When in the stationmaster's office later in the day I heard that the coach is needed for this Thursday, so I hope the Door Team were able to fix it.

An unusual view looking towards the Works and the station from the Cotswold side of the yard.

While outside, the chance to have another look at what is next in line for the Paintshop when the Santa Coach is repainted. Above the GWR Creosote Tank 43914 standing outside the Barn; below the first of the two GWR tool vans No. 4 alongside the Works.

 

This was the other tool van, no. 92, after we had repainted it in 2009. It will be good to have both vans looking like this again.

As expected much of the day's work was concentrated on the Santa Coach. With secondary filling now underway on the greyed-up sides, we needed to do more on the two ends to keep everything in balance. David worked at the south end, initially removing flaking paint on the Malvern side of the corridor connection.

Richard concentrated on the north end, removing a lot of the flaking paint on the connection wood.

Later on David had the angle grinder in action, cleaning up the loose paint, with the underlying BR blue being revealed.

Although the roof has already been painted, we felt that the edge just behind and above the gutter on the Malvern side needed more cleaning up. It had also gone a bit green with algae. So Maurice also resorted to angle grinding to remove the crusty edge. Maurice then followed up with etch primer.

I went over the Cotswold side marking out with chalk all the areas that needed secondary filling. Alan then followed on with the filler.

With a lot of digging out completed Richard applied red oxide where needed, later following on with the fibre paste (bridging filler) where there were large gaps.

 David was also adding fibre paste at his end of the coach.

 Maurice finished his day vacuuming the Malvern side of the roof.

 

Moving back to mid morning and the first northbound train, very appropriately "The Cornishman",  headed by 7903 "Foremarke Hall".

Then on to lunchtime and now sat on the S&T trailer in Platform 2 Bay. No guesses as to why Pam and I like sitting here for lunch on a warm sunny day.

On to other work. In the Barn Bob is now undercoating the roof of FK 13326.

 Inside RBr 1675 Derek was painting creocote on the underside of the floorboarding.

Robert cut a new liner for this Malvern side doorway and was assessing its fit.

Robert also made a unit to fit on one of our tool cupboard shelves, so that the tools could be stored individually and not in a tangled pile. I imagine he plans (or has been requested) to make similar for the other shelves. A good idea because they need it.

Everytime I park my car in the alcove outside the yard gate, Maurice and I always comment on the incomplete top coating on the solebar on the Toad brake van. Well, time we did something about it, so Maurice had a break from the Santa coach roof and applied the GW Grey where needed. In fact it wasn't just the sole bar as can be seen in the photo. It all looked so much better when the job was finished.