Saturday 6th - Wet play, and a Wednesday evening wagon update

 A bit damp today, at times very! So work on the Open C wagon outside had to take a back seat for the morning. 

Luckily with the doors for the Mica arriving on Thursday, Maurice could get going with the wood primer.

Alan had finished work on the first set of window frames dismantle don 4798, so he had a gap to do some welding for us on the first corner on the Mica. This should allow us to start fitting some planks now.

On 4798, Ian and Andy did some tidying up prior to taking apart the next area ready for welding repairs.

Over on the jack road Dave continued the painting inside the luggage area of the BCK.

Some things can't be put off just because of a bit of rain, and shunting rakes 3 and 4 ready for the diesel gala next weekend was one of them. Having had a soaking on arm waving duty on Wednesday, I let Clive do the honours today.

Back inside and another welding job for Alan, as John beats a retreat having marked it all out and done some other bits on it. A component for S&T this time.

On other bits and pieces, George cleaned up the next vacuum cylinder. We like to have one ready to go at a moment's notice and we don't after 5042's impromptu visit to the works the other week.

The FK is making good progress, now with a fully fitted floor to stand on, Simon can refit the ceiling panels.

On the new ends Phil reinstates the lighting connections.

Onto the RBr then, where Chris and Robert were soldiering on with panelling. It's slow and steady here.

There was a bit of umming and ahing about what to do with radiator covers. They looked a bit grubby, should we paint them, and if so what with? After a bit of experimenting Dave found that 240 grit paper actually brought them all back to a good sheen, this is definitely the preferred solution. Oh well, only lots more to go Dave!

By the afternoon the rain had stopped and we could do a bit more on the Open C outside. A socket set and a length of tubing got the bolts off all 4 end stanchions. There was a lot of rust behind these, and we need to make some modifications to these anyway, so good to get them off. I also did quite well getting a good deal of brake rigging off ready to be cleaned up on the workbench on another rainy day.

The other job was to open up the axleboxes. They were pretty grotty both inside and out, it took Maurice quite some time to clean them up.

A bowl full of gunk and a nearly empty axlebox bottom! We think this one ran a hot box at some point so they packed it with grease to limp home. Evidence of this is a rather poorly journal surface - a job for another day that.

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It's been far too long since an update on Wednesday evening activities at Toddington, and as we've started 2 new projects it seemed a good opportunity.

First up is GWR Open A 31554/ This is a very similar job to the Open C we're doing at Winchcombe, basically identical construction and work required, just a bit shorter! Greg makes a start cutting bolts...

Dan and I well into destruction, definitely a fun job!

Then onto taking brake gear apart...

And the view after end stanchions taken off too. Sound familiar?!

Also at Toddington work has begun on starfish 14353. Deconstruction takes a bit longer here as there's lots of rivets to knock out before you can take a metal panel out.

Once again this is a full strip down, but some bits are already ready to go back on as Ash cleaned up and painted the first bits of brake gear.

So lots going on, even if I forget to report it all the time. It's worth following our wagon activities on Facebook as well if you're on there, we try and do a round-up of all wagon work at both Winchcombe and Toddington every month or so.