Tuesday 10th - Cream done, brown next

It's good to go home feeling well satisfied  and knowing a lot of good progress has been made. That was certainly the case with Tuesday's efforts.

Chris fits the final set of bolts to the Open C wagon, although I remembering him saying that they are one bolt short. A search in the drawers holding all kinds of bolts, nuts and washers unfortunately did not provide one of the correct length. Later on I could hear the sound of an anglegrinder being used to trim off the excess lengths of those fitted. They were then coated in primer.

The inside top planks are being painted, beginning with a coat of primer. Robert, ......

........ Paul (taping up), .......

........ and Keith all getting involved.

Maurice gave both of the top ends of the MICA van another coat of gloss white.

Both wagons are now very near to completion, bar the tempering of the springs for the MICA and possible sourcing of replacement buffers for the Open C wagon.

Some really good progress was made with TSO 5023 which was brought into the Paintshop on Saturday.

Both David and Tony got cracking with powered brushes to remove all the loose, cracking filler from the rivet line on both sides.

The Cotswold side had been started by Pam on Saturday. This required a great deal more work, but Tony was able to complete it along with some further areas. David also completed what he needed to do on the Malvern side.

While I was busy outside, Robert had removed the water damaged back panels on two of the doors on the Cotswold side. New ones will be made to replace them.

When Richard and I had finished what we could on the Discovery coach, Richard went round 5023 removing the old roundels and number transfers.

The results of Tony's and David's efforts can be seen with the primed rivet lines. These will be filled with Upol fibre paste which is waterproof and will prevent future breakouts. With the rivet lines primed, both Tony and David proceeded to do a general bodyside sanding.

Besides sanding the side of the coach, Tony also removed loose paint from the roof edge. This will be the first coach to be refurbished without Bob Mac's roofing work - he will forever be missed.

As detailed above, the Malvern side rivet line was in a much better state. I later went round the Paintshop giving it a serious session with the Henry vacuum cleaner.

Richard and I had a good few hours adding the cream top coat to the Discovery Coach in Platform 2 bay. The sun was just cool enough to allow us to paint, as much as anything thanks to the frequent cloud cover. I would have loved to have got some gloss brown on the bottom section, but with the day moving on and cloud cover diminishing, we decided to call it a day. Thursday has thundery showers and this weekend is the Railway's Beer Festival, so the bottom section will have to wait until next week.