Saturday 25th - Getting cold, keeping warm

 A very frosty start to the day, appropriately wintery for the first day of Santa operations. Despite the cold we still emerge to watch the trains go by... 

Not the ideal turn to be on 2807 with that open cab.

The other loco on duty was visiting prairie 5526. Although it was probably warmer in the cab for crews, it nearly wasn't for passengers, as somehow it had managed to make it to Winchcombe with a faulty steam heat bag. So it was down to us to change it. Robert caught the gang looking to see what it was all about.

While Paul caught them in action. All sorted, and passengers were kept warm and happy.

Not so warm, but still happy playing with pipes was John underneath the FK, another series of joints sorted out today.

Several of us warmed up by loading the latest batch of completed seats for the Dean Forest, these were the last of the Mk1 seats plus the first few Mk2 bits.

Up in the gods today, Maurice and I fitted the end beading and then trimmed the canvas for its final look. Just needs painting now.

Greg joined us in a change from our usual Wednesday evening to have a go at the ceiling inside. rather than try and scrape all the paint off, which no one fancied, he had a thin smooth filler to skim over the top.

Late in the day I had a go at the first bit of interior painting.

The RBr is running through people at a rate, even Kevin got involved today having sorted out the stores, to have a go at getting the end corridor door working. I did see it sliding back and forth towards the end of the day so mission accomplished?

The kitchen is now mostly panelled with plywood.

Robert was working on door thresholds today, carefully cutting out the details.

And fitted in place - of course a bit of the flooring had to come up again temporarily!

Elsewhere Rod was in for a change to his usual day to continue on capping strip fitting.

Dave ended up spending most of the day just taking the masking tape off the NYMR SK, unfortunately it really didn't like being left on and refused to come of in anything more than small sections at a time.

Pam was pleased to be back, initially painting some seat frames that had turned up, later doing a bit more top coating on the Cotswold side of the SK.

I mooched outside just as it was getting dark to see what was going on and have a look myself at our visiting loco.

Unfortunately partially due to some poor coal it had clinkered up quite badly so ended up swapping onto the earlier finish train when the two crossed.

And one more GWR prairie, this time from today hence the slightly late blog posting, a day at Warley where they usually have a full size item of rolling stock, this time 5164 on it's way back from barrow Hill for overhaul. The wallet was lightened somewhat and some superb modelling was admired.