Saturday 2nd - Not many pictures, busy playing wagons

 A very short blog today I'm afraid, just too busy to take many photos!

We decided today would be a good day to get the Open C in the air to take a look at the South wheelset, which we'd identified as a bit dodgy in the journal/bearing area.

Cue some careful jacking with lots of props and blocks of wood. All done nice and safely, with the wagon scotched at the far end too.

The end result was not as bad as feared. The damage to the journals was not as bad as we thought, and we can polish it out with emery paper rather than have to send the wheelset away for turning. The bearings definitely needed re-white metalling though so they have been sent up to Toddington where they can do that for us.

I'm afraid a rather random selection of bits and pieces from the rest of the day on the odd occasion I remembered to get the camera out before being called away to Toddington for some shunting (see later)

Dave and Roger, 2 of our PASMA trained people, started the morning re-arranging the scaffold tower for Laura and Simon's son, who is an electrician, to put in a new 3 phase connection in the barn for the new(ish) big welding machine.

Alan was cracking on with the welding on the North end of the RMB, now on the jack road.

Progress at the end of the day.

The through road on the barn now has the weedkilling wagon inside along with the gantry from the RMB.

Maurice started off the day back on his sack truck project.

Various small jobs were then done on the Mica by Paul and Maurice including fitting the door bump wooden blocks. The locking bar was off for painting after final adjustments made during the week.

Dave with a roller!? :o A much quicker way to do the roof. Once this is finished we can really motor on with glossing the sides.

Bob continued with various bits of undercoating, there's always random small sections that get missed as there's something else in the way.

3850 and Foremarke Hall were the service locos today, both looking resplendent in the sun. Bryony leans out to do the double token swap.

Another of our cunning plans involving utilising the steam loco and crew that come off slightly earlier - we needed to extract the Toad from the goods train in the North siding for some works. I popped up to provide some arm waving - thanks to Tom and Dan for staying on the footplate a bit longer. A couple of natural pauses in proceedings meant photos could be had...

Particularly pleased with this one as we put the set back in the siding - for all the world this could be trundling along on double track here.

Back to Winchcombe in time for a cuppa before the end of the day. Dave has A SLICE of Rose's fruit cake. Got enough there Dave!?

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I saw a couple of people asking about wagon activities at Toddington - happy to provide. 

GWR Open A 'Oxley Sidings' was failed with a rotten floor before the steam gala. We have now got as far as removing it all and scrubbing up and painting the frame. 

The end is in sight for the long running saga of the GWR water tank, with the end timbers drilled ready for fitting. Hopefully next week should be a bit of a milestone as we assemble everything together.

In preparation all the various fittings have been rounded up and checked so hopefully we're ready to go.

In slow time we have also continued cleaning up various bits and pieces from the as yet unrestored Open A. The collection slowly grows.

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Finally, to answer a couple of questions on the proposed blue and grey set, it will effectively be set 4. Set 1 is chocolate and cream, set 2 is crimson and cream, set 3 will nominally be chocolate and cream but I suspect in reality will be a mix for quite a while.

I think in an ideal world while set 4 is still being painted, it would be nice to marshal the spare maroon coaches not yet repainted in there too. As far as I know, other than BSK 35308 as the initial coach, no other coaches have specifically been identified yet.