Saturday 3rd - It *is* a quick repaint!

 

Just to prove the doubters wrong, boom! Same on the other side too, bottom half in light grey on 4790. Mainly just to show up any imperfections in the filling before painting proper begins. All looking good with just some minor finessing.

Dave captured the SO as it was briefly dragged out before I got going with the paint to move the spare wheelsets behind it out the way.

And yes, we are doing a little metal replacement, but that was coming along nicely too, both big patches welded in today by Alan. I slapped some primer on it last thing so Tuesday's job is to blend it all in to the rest of the coach.

Elsewhere underneath Ian had the black MIO on the newly fitted DA valves.

And John fitted new insulation round the repaired sections of steam heat pipe.

It was just Paul on the Mica today, Clive and Maurice having gone up to Broadway to progress the LSWR open. We're keeping the existing roof canvas but all the old battening and screws needed taking out and the door lintel cleaning up.

Into the workshop, and Ken was working on bits on both gangway connections today. Hopefully by the time we've finished repainting the SO we can finish painting this one - not too much left to do but we don't want to do a final topcoat 'til it's ready.

John's project of the day was to machine good a valve in the plumbing for the BCK, the old one was a bit knackered, but a spare dug out had a different taper. Standard Mk1 eh...

Speaking of the BCK, Dave grabbed a picture of the fully repainted corridor.

Meanwhile the moquette for the small tip-up seat in the guard's compartment had been declared no good and sent to upholstery for recovering. The main seat cushion was also a potential but decided as ok. (The one in 9000 is much more threadbare hint hint!)

Dave also caught Ian doing a bit of upholstery! Maybe he fancied something a bit cleaner for a change...

A different day for Chris and Robert, and a welcome break from the RBr I'm sure, was to put together the two GWR benches we've had kicking around as a kit of parts for a little while now. This one is destined for Hayles I think.

The RBr is still creeping forwards though, Dave stuck and screwed a few more bottom door rubbers in place.

While inside Simon had the orbital sander on the servery door frame.

Lastly, with so many bits and pieces on the trestles, Dave spent the morning blitzing some of them. The ply panels are some bits of skirting board for the RBr and the window frames are for one of the coaches in the third rake.

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Part 3 of railways in North Wales

Another trip to Porthmadog was next on the itinerary, a tour of Boston Lodge works was booked for the morning, a new venture for them much like our own behind the scenes tours. I was delighted to see we had our own little private train to take us from Harbour station, with some proper vintage Victorian carriages to boot, that's the stuff.

After the short trip across the causeway (I bagged a spot in first class, very salubrious!) we alighted at Boston Lodge Halt.

First stop was a view from the top over the site. The white building surrounded by stone buildings on the right is the original lodge, for housing workers building the causeway. 

Many buildings here date from the original works - the oldest continual loco works in the world.

A peek in the original erecting shop where locos are still maintained and built.

Every now and then we stopped listening to our excellent guide as a steam train trundled past, it's surprisingly bustling. Along with ordinary passenger trains, this freight train of bogie opens steamed down from Blanau and into a shed, behind our private shuttle.

One of the more modern sheds on site housed some of the smaller locos, effectively a bit of a toybox, and why not! Welsh Pony is nominally serviceable but is missing a few vital parts at the moment.

Ahha, carriage works! Quite a contrast with our own. The steel chassis are done in the erecting shop seen earlier, after that it's all woodworking. The carriage work done here is phenomenal, not only do they restore their own carriages, but they build their own, both Victorian replicas of originals, and modern style coaches, and they do contract work for other railways. On the right a new build coach for the Talyllyn, the left was a contract job for a standard gauge coach, we weren't quite sure what, it looked vaguely Stroudley-esque?

I was very jealous of their carriage sheds. 5 roads in total, this shed had 3. All of their modern stock and Victorian and other heritage original/replica stock is undercover. Not only that, but at Minffordd they have another 5 road storage shed to store their collection of 200 wagons! Permission for bottom lip to quiver sir! 

As a few rakes were out on the line, this was apparently an ideal bit of track to be doing driver experiences on another little Quarry Hunslet, which looked rather good fun.

Last stop on the tour was the old original engine running shed.

Various bits and pieces were gathering dust here, including Princess, one of the original England locos delivered to the line along with Prince.

A few of the early tiny little carriages were in there too.

One of them was in our little train back to Harbour station, quite cramped and austere!

After a spot of lunch, an amble up the platform to watch the morning Ffestiniog train pull in, in the capable hands of one of the double Fairlies. Amazingly when the hoards disembarked, one of them came up to me and said "You're Alex, I'm an avid reader of the blog!" Always a pleasure to meet readers out and about, although they were on holiday just like us.

Soon enough we had a loco at the head of our afternoon train of heritage stock that went as far as Tan-Y-Bwlch, our afternoon destination. We decided to go for the full experience travelling in this replica 'toast rack' coach on the way up, a different sort of 'open' to the one we're used to!

Tan-Y-Bwlch was a very nice station, this trip gave us an hour for a short walk and an ice-cream from the cafe before our return.

We went back in this slightly more conventional Victorian bow-sider, one of the first design of bogie coaches in the UK.

It was a very pleasant trip, with all the twists and turns there were plenty of views. I was particularly impressed by this substantial retaining wall. Amazing that this line was engineered before steam locos had really got off the ground, luckily due to the gravity train requirements it was suitable for steam when it finally came along.