Monday 4th - A Lower Turnout

 In days gone by 12 would have been very good, but now it is the lowest this year. No-one is leaving - grandparenting, holidays, doctor visits.

First up are Greg and Lynn,

Followed by Long Tall Steve disappearing after cleaning tables in this area.

I had been on Ghostbuster duties today, so most of them were here by the time I finished!

Kath, Steve, Rich, Lynn, Greg and John M

No photo of the outside team today - Chris, Paul, Peter and Tim. Nigel was busy inside rake 2.

Last Thursday was the first of the Teddy Bear outings this year. They are very pleased to be removed from their sacks in the cupboard! Here is Derek being read a story by his friend Polar Bear.

We also have a wooden train set and some lucky young lad had his dad make this great layout.

Back again this Thursday - bring your teddies!

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.

Thursday 31st - More changes

Not a large number in today, but a busy one with RBr 1675 being shunted out following the loading of more kitchen items. RMB 1876 is now on the jack road and the weed spraying wagon brought in to the Barn through road. The very heavy south corridor connection from 1876 has also been laid on stands ready for Ken to work on it.

Starting out in the yard with the Indoor Gang, Geoff and Alan were fixing the back of the south end door on SK 25451, another faded maroon coach which could go into crimson and cream livery.

Reattaching the leather strap.

Paul had been cleaning inside Rake 3. He joins Geoff and Alan as they watch 3850 come by with the Cheltenham train.

Arriving back outside the Barn a sit down to watch 47105 pass with the Broadway train.

Maurice continues working on the large sack truck, here painting red oxide on the cleaned up wheels.

The wood frame has been coated in dark grey undercoat.

Dave battles with a hinge.

Phil is repairing coach light controls.

Ken was busy on Wednesday with the completed connection wood support now in place at the south end of 1876. The three unpainted top sections will be removed for painting.

Vacuum system tests are being made on 1876 with the vacuum pump set in place.

John works in the location of the DA valve and vacuum cylinder.

The final bit of gala display goods are put away until next time. Richard II and Mike return the batteries with the LED and tungsten bulb comparison display to their container.

More progress with TSO 5023. Jeff undercoats the remaining length of gutter and top panel on the Cotswold side.

He then moved to the opposite side to top coat a window still in undercoat.

I got cracking with the initial flatting on the madder undercoat on the same side.

Phil got going with the grey MIO on the Malvern side of the roof. It will need two coats.

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On Tuesday I responded to David A's recent query connected to the Fawley Hill Museum:

David AJuly 19, 2025 at 5:40 PM

is Holiday Haunts O gauge Layout still there?

My suggestion that it may have been the large O gauge layout in the Museum building was incorrect. Neil, a member of the FOWS, has kindly provided an interesting answer.

Holiday Haunts was a spectacular O-gauge exhibition 

layout inspired by the main line past Dawlish and Teignmouth. No sidings or loops, just 2 running lines used to display a sequence of excellent O-gauge trains. Looking on the Internet, it was certainly at Fawley some years ago but clearly not there now. Still photos don't do it justice because it was VERY long. I did take some film of it at the Warley exhibition in both 2004 and 2006. The 2006 clips are longer and better but are very large files, far too large to send as an attachment.

I have attached one of the short clips from 2004 but it only shows one end of the layout as there were tunnels (think of Dawlish) and then there was another long stretch beyond them. As I recall the layout was retired from the exhibition circuit after the 2006 show. 

The successor layout by the same group was called Dainton Bank and was based on the section of the main line beyond Newton Abbott. That had sidings for the banking locos.

Neil (FOWS)

 

 

Wednesday 30th - 'Upholstery and stuff.....'

 This week we start with the very popular upholstery department, they were extremely popular at the recent Diesel Gala.

The team decided the time had arrived for a huge clean up, Laura, Eve, Ceri and Chris got to grips with all of the shelving. A place for everything and everything in its place.

They were given a seat from a signal box ( not sure which one) for stripping and re-upholstering, it was a bit of a challenge but Eve and Chris got to grips with it.

Now completely stripped ...... watch this space!

In other news, it wasn't raining so we descended on the eventually to be our very own Weed killer wagon.

There are a number of structures to be made, and here Bryan is priming various bare metal areas.

Bob is painting the corrugated panels which will become the roof. Today we had delivered the metal section to  make the longitudinal roof supports. We will have to wait for space in the workshop, as the weather keeps hampering progress.

Rex in the background grabbed a paint brush .....

Alex had asked us to rectify a small problem on the Mica van. The side door locking bar was misaligned, so Gerry came up with the solution .....

.... He re profiled the latch, removed it to the bench ....

....... the other end was cut off and then a small extension plate was made. Here I am tacking it on, to be fully welded off the vehicle.

..... same vehicle, with 2 buffer mounting bolts missing. We used a big drill and a small amount of heat to remove the one and Stuart used a porta- power to re align the other side and a new bolt went straight in, just needs paint and new springs and its pretty much finished.

Other jobs in the works, Phil is fitting electrical connectors to 4798 ....

.... and cleaning light fittings.

Ken is fitting woods for the corridor connection at the south end of RMB 1876. 

John is fitting radiators and various brackets in 1675.

Simon is cracking on with the South vestibule of 1876.  

Just the usual suspects today.

Many thanks to Gerry for the photos.