Tuesday 4th - Rain doesn't stop play

 A quieter day than usual, with a few regulars missing for one reason or another. Thanks to the rain putting a stop to any outdoor projects, there was excellent progress on the tank wagon with a number of people gravitating towards it during the day.

Maurice was first to get going on undercoating the top half of the tank.

Roger spent the day crawling round underneath with the underframe black.

Bob joined in with undercoating the tank but by lunch time there wasn't much left to do, so he and I both cracked open the gloss black, it's all happening very quickly!

Mid afternoon with all four of us working on it, Roger now almost entirely disappeared in the underframe, Maurice doing the final bit of undercoating, and Bob and I managed to gloss most of the solebar, headstocks and part of the end stanchions.

With the works being open on Friday for the diesel gala, I thought a signwriting demonstration would be good, and as most of the lettering for this wagon is on the solebar which is now all glossed, I started sorting out the templates ready.

It was a pretty damp day, but those who made the effort to come out were rewarded with Std 2 78019 in service which is still with us after the gala, alongside P&O.

Speaking of the diesel gala, Dave spent much of the day putting all the various bits and pieces together for the works opening, all the barriers, signs and displays - there's really quite a lot these days!

The end is definitely in sight for the Santa coach. I didn't bother photographing another coat of varnish on half the Cotswold side I did as it looks much the same as before, but Stu and Martin (not pictured) cracked on with the lining on the Malvern side. By the end of the day just the lower black line to do.

Dave was restricted to indoor duties too and carried on dismantling one of the compartment doors for the TK.

Later handing over to Alan for the cleaning up process.

Finally for today, a bit of progress on the RBr as Ainsley adjust the Malvern side emergency door.