Tuesday 14th - A lot of completing

Time is galloping by. Nearly half of January gone already and still much to do before the new season starts.

A smaller group in today, but for a while increased when Bob and Pete, our regular flooring contractors, came to prepare the vestibule floors in FK 13326. Also over the past few days the annual PAT testing has been underway throughout the Works with two of the Railway's testers in semi-residence while this very extensive job is done.

Pete carefully lays the screeding compound in the north vestibule.

The south vestibule very neatly done and drying well.

The rolls of coir matting ready for laying on Wednesday. I later covered them up with respect to the frequent passage of varnish and paint as work progressed during the day.

On the subject of varnish Richard completed the window varnishing on the Malvern side of 13326.

On the opposite side Ian completed the window cleaning. He also completed the painting of the footboards.

With both sides fully painted and varnishing underway it was time to complete the demarcation zones at the four corners of the coach. New tape was put on and the black gloss painted up to it.

The Malvern side north end.

Job done. Carefully removing the tape at the Malvern side south end. Richard also took care of some remaining bits of lining out in the Cotswold side centre doorway.

Ian and Derek admiring the very good varnishing done by Bob and Alex. 

Urgent work for Shutdown in the form of new battery box covers, now undercoated. A number of battery boxes need either partial repair or completely replacing. However coaches will have to be moved out of the station in order to be able to access some of them.

Robert and Chris were also involved with creating a new toilet floor at the south end of SO 4798.

Tony took on the cleaning up of the heating pipe covers from FO 3127. This one needed the securing brackets straightening.

He used an angle grinder with wire brush and really got a lot of the old paint and grime off this one. If they all ended up like this then we could put clear lacquer on them as we did for those in 1675.

 

Another job we need to get finished is the tip-up seat support strap Pam has made for the guards compartment in BCK 21272. With the PAT testing going on in the Upholstery workshop, Pam uses a Mess Room table to sew on the special multi-stranded loops she made.

With Upholstery now available Pam uses the overlocker to bind the ends of the strap. Unfortunately the strap was too tough and the overlocking failed, so a job for Pam at home.

A nice little job with which to finish the day was top coating the little ply surround made by Alan for the heating switch in 1675's saloon.

Back to Chris and Robert who are back to the replanking at the north end of the MICA van.

Maurice spent the day continuing the top coating of the frame and underneath in GW Grey.

Gosh, when did this appear? It all looks very neat. We are continually coming up with ways to improve our Works.

Walking through the Works to check all is well at the end of the day, a quick look outside at the gathering dusk.