Saturday 20th - Here and gone

 A bit of a rush round day for me as I was on duty on the trains in the afternoon, followed by a week off, so I wanted to make another decent impact on the SO quick repaint and make sure wagon projects were able to tick along while I was away too.

So starting off with the Mica, it was great to have James back, who had a good go at the Cotswold side South corner replacing various bits of metal where the tinworm had eaten away.

Over on the painting trestles this batch of ironwork for the Open C will soon be done by Maurice and can go into storage for a bit, the brake push rods are all done too.

Outside the barn we had an exciting new delivery in the form of 4 like new BR1 wheelsets from Carnforth. These will be of great help as although we had spare BR1 bogie frames, we didn't actually have any spare runnable wheelsets before, so any swaps or wheel turnings had to involve a wait and accommodation bogies. They have just been turned, but apart form the shiny rims there was a lot of crud to remove elsewhere so the dirty gang got stuck in.

Later on getting the pressure washer out too, as Andy watches 2807 past with a service train.

Also in the barn, we're cracking on with SO 4790. Having vouched for it being a quick repaint, I felt obliged to do another big sanding session, joined by Maurice for a time too. John also went round as pictured checking ride heights and the like. A vacuum test suggests in general it holds well but one cylinder drops off quicker than we'd like.

Outside before the afternoon rain came, Pat finished his project of painting the electrical container. A year or two in the sunlight and this will blend in well.

Upstairs Laura and John were working on seats for the first bay of the other SO in the works, 4798 (it remains to be seen whether it is wise to have 2 virtually identical coaches adjacent to each other each having wildly differing levels of work!)

 

Onto the RBr then, where Robert,

And Simon were both toing and froing between the woodwork shop and the coach fettling various bits of trim.

Inside the electrical compartment Pam was busy painting

While in the workshop John was machining some bits for the coach, I'm not quite sure what.

The FK edges closer too, Ken was working on the North corridor connection.

Later on Maurice was doing a spot of painting in the same area.

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And the reason for the late blog, day 1; Welshpool & Llanfair Light Railway.

The delightful GWR No. 822 'The Earl' was our steed for the trip to Llanfair and back.

Before that though, a look round their storage/display shed found these two very smart open wagons including a rare narrow gave private owner wagon, both new replicas.

Althuogh the replica GWR carriages were hidden away, the ones in service from Sierra Leone and Hungary had excellent balconies, we felt like we were almost in the cab with the crew as we watched the stunning Marcher scenery.

A run round at the other and and time to mooch around a bit.

Before returning back, again we couldn't resist that front balcony. With some steep gradients it certainly got noisy at times!