Saturday 7th - Preparations

 A day of preparations with a number of activities looking towards events in the coming weeks.

The first job was the shunt the Fruit C into position by the Santa coach ready for the team to start getting things ready for the Christmas season. Yes it soon creeps up!

The other preparation job by the shunting team was to take TSO 5042 out of the barn with all its mechanical work now complete, ready to put back in the set on Tuesday. Another TSO requiring some work will come out at the same time I think.

Maurice and I spent much of the day doing axlebox exams on wagons for the upcoming Autumn Showcase mixed traction gala, where the goods train will be out and about along with a lot else besides. 

Not so great preparation, bit of adjustment required on this footboard to get to the axlebox! At some point the footboards need properly renewing anyway.

It was just Dave in the paintshop today doing sanding and prep on the SK. Here working on cleaning up the door edges.

After shunting was over, Andy made a start on taking some of the metalwork apart on the South end of the FK. At the North and James and Alan were doing a good job doing the opposite with the rebuild at that end, but I managed to miss getting a photo.

John had made some fence bracket-y things for lineside clearance today - he wasn't entirely sure what they were for but gave them a good coat of primer nonetheless.

To the RBr then, where Robert was again adjusting a door liner.

With Ben's help they determined how well things were fitting.

Later on it was on to servicing door locks.

Colin and Geoff's lovely Walnut window frame pieces are starting to be fitted, by Simon...

And Steve.

Lastly, Maurice finished the day red glossing the other end of the tool van.

Spending most of the day with oily gloves is not conducive to taking blog photos, so apologies to those I missed out. However, a bit of Wednesday evening activity to catch up on.

The chaired sleeper wagon is largely done from a cosmetic point of view. At some point we'll slap some stuff inside the well, then we 'just' need to sort out a wheel swap and new spring hanger eyebolts to make it a runner. The latter require new forgings so probably not an immediate solution.

So onto the next project then, GWR starfish 30500. It's already a runner, regularly appearing in the demo rake, but it was beginning to look a bit sad with peeling faded paint. A quick job is on the cards as we want it back in the rake by the end of the month for the gala.

So first job was a steam clean to remove the green tinge and anything else loose. As it turned out, also all the white painted lettering too.

Rich followed on with the scraper and wire wheel to get rid of more rust on the body.

And Greg tackled the underframe.

This week and we'd managed to sneak inside the shed. The body has been patched with green primer where necessary, while Greg makes a start on painting the underframe.

The step at this end was very bent, and on the other side missing altogether, so Mark resolved to remove this one to straighten it and use as a pattern for a second one.

Can we paint it up in time? I suspect it may require a little overtime if just for the signwriting!