Thursday 11th - Repairs, wreckage, and construction

Winter Shutdown is now really in top gear with quite a number of today's activities involved. One of the first is the exchange of the bogies from under CK 16221 "Abigail/Charlotte". John and Ian respectively, couple the two removed bogies to the 03, and chain them together so as to move them as a single unit. The bogies were then transferred to the adjacent road in readiness for collection on Tuesday and delivery to St Philips Marsh, Bristol for tyre turning . 

Moving on to the rakes in the station, on board BSKD 34929 Geoff and Alan complete their work to free up the internal sliding doors. Geoff reinstates the vertical strip to the side of the doorway; this had received a fresh coat of varnish where the door had been rubbing.

Alan puts back the door stop on the same side. This will now need a fresh coat of black gloss.

 

The next job was to fix a set of sticking window sliders at the south end of RMB 1876. This was the coach intended for the quick repaint during shutdown and, with all that badly faded paint, it's not hard to see why this had been nominated. RMB 1808 in the 3rd Rake could be substituted, but with the very busy season ahead I'm not sure now if we will be able to do this.

The job entailed the fitting of a new slider. My follow on job was to clean this up and give it a coating in madder undercoat. With the surrounding paint so badly faded I'm tempted to leave it as such.

Back in the Paintshop Geoff updates the two jobs on the spreadsheet and fills out the job completed forms. The forms will be used by our secretary Eve to update the spreadsheet and enable us to chart the progress of the very long job list.

Just beyond 34929, at the front of the Maroon Rake, is TSO 4614. At the north end of the Cotswold side a large outburst of cracking filler needed to be sorted out. It didn't take long to prise off the slabs of filler and reveal the rusting patch underneath. After that it was a series of jobs throughout the day, the low temperature making drying and setting time slower.

An intial sanding to remove almost all the rust, two coats of red oxide, filler, sanding, top up filler, final sanding, a good wipe to remove all the sanding dust, and just as the dusk was creeping in, a coat of madder undercoat. I probably will give this a coat of maroon gloss. The job isn't on the spreadsheet, but I will still fill out a form for our stats.

For Paul and Dennis it was back to cleaning inside the two rakes. With all the seat cushions removed Paul vacuums throughout FO 3132 "Mary".

An occasional problem we have had with these seats is the loosening of the centre headrest, a result of passengers having to hold onto something while squeezing round the table. Another job for Geoff, Alan and Roger to sort out.

Dennis finishes mounting all the chairs on the tables in RBr 1672 in preparation for floor cleaning. Both trains will have Christmas tinsel littered throughout, so plenty of vacuuming to be done

More wreckage in the GW Southern Railway-designed van 144678. Maurice continued the removal of the soaked floor planks.

Phil gives a hand with another big sweep up, after which all the rotten planks and sweepings were removed to the skip. Maurice's next job was removing all the rusted bolts, standing proud now that all the old planks have been removed.

On now to RBr 1675, with Rex making pilot marks ready for drilling another section of angle iron that will be part of the support frame for the new generator.

The sheep's head from underneath CK 16221 showing some of the repair work done by Ken that was mentioned in yesterday's blog post.

Gerry prepares another window frame, adding the sealing strips ..................

.............. and then fitting it on the Malvern side of the coach, initially drilling holes and then clamping the frame tightly to the bodyside with rivets.

Richard I filing something very small. On enquiring it was a washer that need flattening on one side to enable it to be fitted.

Refitting the electrical connection boxes on the south end of 1675. While Phil holds the bolt firmly, .......................

............. inside Richard I fits the washer and nut.

Richard II working with the many cables for the 24 volt system.

The seemingly endless job of stripping off the old paint is progressing. Bob took up the task on the Cotswold side with the old cream paint coming off easily with the hot air gun and scraper.

Then into the residue with the tungsten-carbide scraper. I later tried some paint stripper, which turned out to be more successful that I originally thought, though we will end up using quite a bit to complete the job.

Both ends will be given another coat of green primer after sanding the heat marks from the internal welding. Phil is on the way to completing the north end.