Thursday 16th - A very satisfying day

Another busy day with our metalworking team adding to the number attending today (they move between Wednesday and Thursday according to requirements and availability).

Following the recent delivery of the steel bars, the fabrication of the cross-struts for the Mink van doors could begin. Gerry cleans up the angled cut on this piece.

Gerry and Bryan check the prepared strut against the two hinge bars for the Cotswold side left hand door.

Returning later, the Cotswold side looks almost completed with both cross-struts in place. Nick prepares to do the final bit of welding at the base of the right hand one.

Gerry cleans up the welds for the Malvern side struts.

The end of the day round up of final photos captures the completed job. Well done chaps! The door frames are being made by the Woodwork team and once fitted Richard and Paul can proceed with the door planking.

Earlier in the day, Ben discusses welding with Nick. New member Ben has recently joined our Door Team, but in his time here has already been involved with vacuum cylinders and is now also showing an interest in metalworking.

Later it was back to doors as Rod has found the door locks records that Ben had been looking for. 

Understandably we are still thrilled with discovering the original S R on the original wood planks on the side of the Queen Mary guards van.

The van is going back into Southern Railway livery so it's important to capture the original lettering. Alex carefully traces the outline of the two letters.

A handy temporary store before taking them inside for safekeeping.

Progress has resumed with a small group going in the next day to continue the old paint removal and a general sand down. 

Over to the 3rd Rake to find Alan and Geoff doing maintenance on some of the access cupboards. Paul and Dennis were also busy as usual on the rake. When I saw them it was in the store sorting out some pipe/hose connections.

With the one-o-clock lunch break looming, time to go out and watch the trains.

After a busy morning with us, Alex dashed off to Toddington as he was guard on the Chocolate-and-Cream rake for the afternoon. In charge of a nice rake of coaches hauled by a Merchant Navy, what more can you ask for?

I can hear the cries, don't you mean a nice rake of coaches hauled by a Great Western Hall? P&O is a magnificent engine, but for many Foremarke is still our flagship.

Dave pours a welcoming cup of tea in our makeshift Barn "tea room". Although we could be back in our lovely Mess Room, we are still happy to enjoy the fresh air with the roller shutters raised and enjoy the trains as they pass. 

Catching up with the progress inside TK 24006, co-owners Dave and Robert have been making great strides with quite a lot achieved now. The south end compartments are about as complete as they can currently go and in this one, with the ceiling now top coated, Dave is reinstating the ceiling vent covers.

To help ease the stack of refurbished beading, panel strips, window surrounds, etc, with the corridor ceiling now also top coated, some of the panelling strips have been put back, albeit on a temporary basis.

The inside of the first compartment in the south end of 24006 with the impressive stacks of refurbished items.

When the arms are pulled down to give three abreast, the spacious seating fitted to the Midland built MK1 coaches could be taken for First Class. However the tired Bournemouth Blue moquette is in desperate need of replacement.

Dave shows me where Robert had got to with the sanding down of the corridor compartment walls and subsequent initial coat of varnish. Basically almost to the north end of the coach.

Two underseat heaters that will be serviced and then fitted where needed. These came from Cranmore, East Somerset Railway.

Visiting the Woodwork/Doors shop to see the Slam-lock Demonstrator, which had been dug out to show Ben the action of this important piece of door equipment that had been created by Craig.

Another in-house creation - the name says it all

Now you see it - now you don't ! That pile of shavings and sawdust will suddenly vanish when Rod brushes it closer to the large floor level duct of the extraction system. This very useful equipment attaches to all the main woodworking machines and, with its pipework stretching all across the workshop ceiling, Eddie nicknamed it "the octopus".

One of my last jobs of the day was to undercoat the hopper and brake handwheels on Dogfish 993061. These had been cleaned up of old paint, and then undercoated in Red Oxide by David the day before.

 (Photo: Ian)

Ian took the opportunity to catch me painting the undersides of the handwheels. It doesn't seem to matter what you do with these ballast wagons, whether general repairs, metalworking or painting, they really are the most awkward things to work on.

John had a busy day, some of which was working on these and checking the drawbars. With some vacuum hoses already replaced, this one has also been identified as needing the same.

Tuesday 14th - Back to the usual and another surprise (non-railway)

It was back to the usual Tuesday gang with several returning after spells away. It was somewhat wet to say the least but that didn't stop us rushing out as usual to watch the passing trains, which looked very atmosperic in the damp conditions.

The Shark, being stabled just outside the end of the Paintshop, is very handy when it comes to watching the trains in wet weather. While Foremarke Hall waits with the northbound train, Maurice, Stu, Roger and Alex watch P&O approach with the second train of the day.

As the train passes, the crew acknowledges our presence on the veranda, as do many of the passengers all happily waving and looking surprised to see us where we were..

Foremarke comes by with the early train from Cheltenham

So, what were we up to during the day? During the course of the past few weeks with all the work on the doors and doorway frames on BSK 34929, we had generated a fair amount of dust. Although there is still a lot to do, clearing this is still a very worthwhile job, so Richard set to with the Henry. Even the compartment door windows needed a good dusting, as can be seen with the nearest one.

In the process of making even more dust, but the jobs had to be done, are Stu and Maurice working on the Guards doorframe and centre passenger door respectively.

The new aluminium capping strip now given a coat of etch primer and the passenger door sides cleaned up and coated in base undercoat Light Grey.

Maurice completes this job with a coating on the top of the door frame.

Keith continued the cleaning up of the four table tops destined for the compartments in 34929. 

With the sanding of the edges now completed, the first coat of varnish has been applied. It was originally thought that these would have to be repainted as the original paint had gone too far into the grain, but with the combined efforts of Keith and Pam (last weekend), even the graffitti on one of them had been removed. A second coat will be added by Pam on Saturday.

Alex was rostered as guard during the afternoon, but was with us for the morning. One of the larger station noticeboards belonging to Toddington was being reconstructed following his excellent efforts with the paintwork and signwriting.

In Upholstery Dave uses the electric bread knife to shape the foam. This would be impossible to cut neatly by any other method.

Another carefully marked out piece awaits his attention. Dave stated that there were about three seat bays left to do in TSO 5042.

Returning about an hour later and Dave is already well into rebuilding this seat base. The large pins are being inserted to secure the white canvas and foam to the base prior to stapling.

In the Barn the outer two of the three Dogfish ballast wagons are having the hand wheels for the hopper doors and brakes repainted. Continuing this lengthy job was Roger, working on 992930.

Clean up completed and the hopper wheels now ready for some red oxide and then white paint. 

The hopper wheels on 993061 also ready for painting. Just the brake wheels on both vehicles left to clean up.

Finally last, but most definitely not least, is Alan busy working on four lamps brought in by Alex for use on the Shark ballast plough next week (Alex will be guard).

Several of us joined in and at the end of the day the white lamps had been undercoated, while the black ones were finished.

Returning to Alan it is amazing the backgrounds that some of us have in our lives. During one of our recent tea breaks Alan, who originally lived in Brecon before moving to Cheltenham a few years ago, talked about his ancestry and we were in for quite a suprise !

Alan's great, great, great uncle (a harpist by profession) went out for a walk one evening and on his return home said to his father "Dad , I've thought of this wonderful tune". He then picked up his harp and played the tune. His father instantly took up his pen and wrote some words to go with it. The result was 'Land of my Fathers", the Welsh national anthem.

 

That was on his grandfather's side of the family. 

 

On his grandmother's side and further back in history, on the battlefield at Agincourt to be precise, one of her ancestors was listed by Shakespeare as Davy Gam Esquire in the list of the English dead. In fact his title is wrong as he put himself in between Henry V and a French knight, who was about to inflict a serious injury on the King, and in doing so received a fatal wound himself. He was knighted by the king either as he lay dying or posthumously. The name Gam has no doubt perpetuated to modern times because Alan's grandmother's surname had evolved to become Games.

 

Monday 13th - This One We Didn't Clean!

 

This is "Tina", the loco department's former mess coach, off to be a café in Lyme Regis. In case it does not look familiar, it is painted Chocolate and Cream on the other side.  A little TLC required.....

There were 9 in for Carriage Cleaning today. We had had a request from the DMU group for help to clean it as it will be in service in October for the first time since March 2020. So after the two main rakes were almost done 3 of us went down to the DMU, while the rest finished off the main rakes. The trip to the DMU is literally from one end of the site to the other - from our supplies up on the north end of Platform 1 to the south end of the sidings in the yard. We used our trolley to carry the kit! On the way we were able to view the inside of the new volunteer mess room/facilities as not all the team had seen it. Thanks for the tour, Ben! This week was vac and glass. We will be back next week for part 2, mopping.  We were K**d hence a two parter!

Saturday 11th - Look what we found!

 We had an excellent day on the Queen Mary today, including a rather nice surprise. Before we get to that though, Dave and Bob continued the clean-up on the metal; Dave working along the Malvern side lower panel with the wire brush before taking up the needle gun for the end structural steel:

And Bob took on the Cotswold side guard's lookout:

As well as re-planking the veranda sides, we were contemplating replacing the plywood/metal cladding on the main cabin sides with leftover timber from the Mink restoration. It was looking a bit tight so Richard asked if I could strip away a little of the plywood inside to see exactly how long the new planks would need to be. I was surprised to find this:

Planking already there! And in pretty good condition too. That was a turn up for the books. So obviously the next stage was to see what it looked like from the outside and have the metal cladding off.

I went along to see how many nuts I could take off the coach bolts with a spanner, surprisingly about 60% were held firm enough by the wood to do so. Richard followed with the angle grinder to take the remainder off. After a lot of careful levering we had the lower panel off, and here we're starting on the upper, thanks Dave for the photo.

When we eventually got that one off, we had a fantastic surprise:

Look at that, the original big S R lettering from 1936! We soon had the wooden battens off to reveal the full picture:

We were extremely chuffed with that find, and all that planking still in good enough condition to keep, with a bit of wood filler to fill all the screw holes and a good sand down. Naturally the lettering will be traced first to be reproduced after painting. So that answers Paul from St Blazey's question from Thursday, yes, the plan is to return it to SR brown livery with the red ends, and to answer Phaasch, the livery choice was inspired by seeing the Bluebell guys' work.

Elsewhere on the wagon front the South end of the Mink was receiving its planking by Richard:

Progress by early afternoon when he switched to help on the Queen Mary:

Right, back to carriages, and specifically 34929 in the paintshop. Surprise surprise, more door work. Ainsley was making some adjustments with an angle grinder:

While in the woodwork shop Robert was shaping something on the bandsaw:

Sorry, I forgot to ask what! Chris was also there, planing the top section of a door frame:

Later it was tried in position:

Upstairs in upholstery they're nearing the end of TSO 5042's seat replacement, they think that have 6 left to go, or 3 bays' worth. Dave was taking off the old moquette:

And Jenny and John added more horsehair padding:

In the workshop John had a rather precise job to do. Next to the bottle of WD-40 is the end product, a fabric cover for the vacuum cylinder piston. John is making all the metal bits for it, here marking them all out with some engineer's blue and a scribe:

George was the sole worker on CK 16221 today, giving some attention to the South end:

and Likewise it was just Robert on TK24006 sanding down more veneer. Look, he's nearly made it to the other end now:

Pam came in with another dog this week she's dog-sitting, this is Ted, and he was quite happy to settle down while Pam was cleaning up the wooden edges on a set of tables (where are they for?)

Obviously Dave had to say hello too: