Saturday 23rd - Shunting in the storm

 Forecast was for high winds and heavy rain, a perfect day for a shunt... In the end it wasn't that bad.

The main exercise of the shunt was to do a bogie swap between FK 13329(?) which had good bogies but not in regular use due to overall condition and SK 25488, in regular use and good condition apart from wheel flats.

It was a successful mission on that front, the coach was sat on its bogies by the end of the day.

Before we could do that though, we had to wait for 3850 to disappear, which had been shunted out of the paintshop on Friday having had its final coat of paint. Foremarke Hall passes by with the ECS for the first Santa train of the year, a somewhat damp affair but I'm assured all had a good time nonetheless.

Start of Santa trains means the griddle in operation at Winchcombe, which is always a temptation too far for many in C&W, Paul captured a few of the usual suspects after a successful mission between santa trains!

In other shunting news yesterday, a sortie went down to Cheltenham Racecourse to pick up some more wagons. There's 3 tank wagons here - the middle one just came along for the ride as the team ran out of time to shunt it out. The two outer ones are next in line for the goods train once we've finished the Mica. A flatrol wagon was collected for onward transport off the railway, and also a vanwide for a planned conversion to a weedkilling wagon. More info on that as we get it! 

To other work then, starting on FK 13326 now in the paintshop. It seems to have dragged on this one, I suspect it will celebrate its 2 year anniversary of entering the works before it leaves again, but hopefully not too much longer. Plenty going on here, Dave attacking the end corridor door, Alan welding up the last bit of guttering, and Bob cleaning up the toilet tank filler pipes. I also went round with the grinder tidying up the bottom edges of the new sheet steel end panels, as they'd previously only been cut to size very roughly. A straight edge and some masking tape as a guide soon had them looking much neater.

At the South end Ben was busy fitting draft excluder strips. Once the doors are done we can do the final topcoat all over.

Work was going well on SO 4798 too, we're really motoring on now. Externally the whole north half is ready for general prep, filling and sanding etc. Alan did another window frame on the South end...

While Clive pulled apart the floor at the South end vestibule...

Allowing Alan to later move in and chop some more metal out.

Some new metal did go in by the end of the day too, half the new baseplate now welded in.

Meanwhile at the North end Simon cracks on with the woodwork.

It was quiet in upholstery today, just Laura steadily working away on more DFR seats.

When I asked what Chris was doing, he told me he was relaying a siding! In a roundabout way he is, the bench is for our P'way manager, in exchange for which we get another siding improvement project. Fair enough!

Alan was testing his 3D printed storage rack for the power tool batteries, excellent idea and well executed.

On the Mica, Paul and Maurice took the rest of the North end apart. Hopefully this is the last timber to come off now!

A week off from bending, John was making the fixing brackets for the tops of the handrails on the milling machine.