Monday 7th - Busy Day - and a Retirement

 There was an excellent turnout of 12 today, which was very fortunate as there was a lot to do. 

It was all go from the off, so this was later in the DMU. Big Ted was making sure Rich was doing a proper job. He must have been satisfied as he then chose a seat for a kip!

But back to the start. Greg, Lawrie, Kath and Jane started inside rake 1. Kath found a slice of bacon on the floor. Suggestion was to leave it on the buffet counter for re-use tomorrow, but they changed their mind on that! The rest of the train had lots of debris.

Nigel was inside rake 2, and I joined him in there with a Ghostbuster. This also had lots of debris. Strange how some weeks they are not bad, then sometimes they are both awful. 

The outside team was Paul, Tim, Peter and David. John as usual was on Toilets.

By Tea Break the outsiders had washed both rakes, so that gave us an opportunity to do some extra. The DMU is now in use on Thursdays for Teddy Bear Thursdays (see below). The set has had some changes due to engine failure in the north end power unit. So the spare had been repainted into green and pressed into service, which meant that the centre trailer could also be added back in. All well and good. But... the insides had not been cleaned. So we had had a request from the DMU user to clean it if we could. As explained above we had time, so Paul, Tim, Peter and self took the long walk down to the DMU. It was vacced, windows cleaned and mopped all through. The new hand vac was just the tool for these bench seats.

Having escaped their captivity at Winchcombe lots of the bears stayed in the DMU ready for their next outing this Thursday. They took a keen interest in what we were doing.

And here is Tim with the one of the mops.

So looking back to last Thursday, here are the bears at their Tea Party. They chose to stay inside as showers were forecast. There was a brief one, but not enough to spoil the day. It was good to see so many children taking part.

Here is the replacement DMU power car. Paint changed from blue to green, and Whiskers hand painted by the magic Alex.

Here was Big Ted on secondman duty.

And now the retirement.

Mark has been battling (very cheerfully) serious illness for some years, but has now decided it is time to step down from the team. He has been a great help in times past and we wish him well for the future, and hopefully he can pay us a social visit on a good day.