Thursday 25th - They are going back up

A quieter day with a number of staff away on holidays, especially now we are almost in May.

Starting with a series of photos of Stu servicing the recently repainted vacuum cylinder.

A quick vacuum of the interior to remove dust and grit. Then the rubber ring is added to provide the seal.

Stu secures the inserted piston.

A quick test using the vacuum cleaner. As the air is drawn out the piston rises.

Now the full test using the vacuum pump.

Now on to FK 13326 where Phil is cutting the holes in the south end for the electrical patress connections.

Ken is beginning the test fitting of the heavy wooden corridor connection back plates at this end of the coach. On the right the wiring is now poking through the cut hole ready for the patress and pigtail connection.

At the north end the wood corridor connection supports are now in place.Think the Painting Team will soon be getting a request to get this end fully painted.

[Photo : Gerry]  I spent a few hours during the afternoon carefully undercoating the inside edges of the windows where I had previously added fresh paintable sealant. Many thanks to Gerry for the photos.

[Photo : Gerry]

Over to Rake 3 and the south end vestibule of SK 25341. Alan has decided to replace the patched up door panel with a new one. A varnishing job to add to the list.

At the south end of SO 4790 Roger is adding some white top coat to the ceiling repairs he made last week. 

Maurice begins his day top coating the north end of the ply van.

This was followed by the door frames. Plenty of ply van jobs ticked off on that white board.

Derek's newly cut and primed boards, now undercoated and ready for fitting to the Monster Van.

Phil was back working on the internal On/Off push stud light panel.

The broken bit and where it fitted. Phil was drilling out the broken screw in the clamped item.

An early job for Phil and Richard I was to clear all the unwanted electrical items out of the kitchen and pantry area on RBr 1675.

The cleared area now ready for the contractor who will be applying the hygenic coating to the walls and floor.

Rex completes the frame for the box to hold the cooling fan which will blow cold air into the lithium battery box.

Rex indicates where it will be fitted on the side of the battery box.

The sheet metal frontage to the generator box, now ready for priming and painting.

They're going back up! The prewelded sections of gutter, complete with sealant backing, are being rivetted in place by Gerry. Rex, on the second tower, initially helped with the positioning.

The air rivetter in action. There are just four places where some follow-up welding will be needed to complete the Malvern side of the coach.

Gerry then moved round to the Cotswold side to begin getting the gutter sections in place. Once the gutters have been reinstated we can resume the undercoating on both sides of 1675. This just leaves the doors to be completed, then the Painting Team will have a completely free hand.

When the Metalwork Team replaced this cupboard with a metal one, it would probably have been put outside and ditched. Kevin had other ideas and with a little doctoring it fitted very nicely under one of the Paintshop tables. Having sat there for a few weeks I at last got around to making use of it as a deep store for some of our preparation materials; these had previously been stored at the bottom of one of our paint cupboards.

No apologies for repeating a scene I included on Tuesday, with the DMU in Platform 2 instead of Foremarke Hall.