Tuesday 16th - All sorts going on

Already half way through the month and another busy Tuesday with a good number attending.

Beginning outside the Barn with the ex-GW Toad brake van.

Toads and water go very well together in nature, but not when the Toad is a former GW brake van and the water is inside the cabin. Barely visible against the leaden sky is the temporary solution to help prevent the water ingress - a former catering-sized metal can which fitted very neatly over the chimney and surrounding hole!

Bob got rid of the water that had accumulated in the stove top and around the base. The latter had overflowed and was the cause of the wet floor. He and I then cleared out all the accumulated rubbish, bits of wood, cushions and chairs. It will be good to get this van rebuilt and running again, especially as it used to be one of the two brake vans giving rides during galas.

Bob then moved into the Workshop and on to the end of CK 16221 to sand down some of the filler on the Malvern side of the north end corridor connection.

Dave was in Upholstery and continuing with the rebuilding of the Bubblecar seats. With the seat base size carefully marked out in the foam, the electric breadknife makes a perfect job of trimming off the excess.

The seat based concerned, newly covered with hessian.

Ainsley was doing an extra day, initially cleaning up the back of the droplight on this door from CK 16221.

He was later cleaning up some door handles in our new mini grit blaster.

Connected up to the compressor, this very handy equipment makes a great job of cleaning small items. The heavy in-built gloves providing the protection still enable enough manouverability inside the box.

For some parts he resorted to the angle grinder.

Alan was sanding more panels from TK 24006. When ready it was taken into the Paintshop and very quickly given a coat of varnish.

Inside 24006 Dave was reinstating some of the high corridor panelling to reduce the ever increasing quantity of cleaned up and revarnished panels, beading and other bits steadily accumulating in the compartment chosen for storage.

 Roger and Dave taking care of things at the end of the morning tea break.

Occasionally a raid of the Woodwork shop bins provides some very useful items. In this case lengths of off-cut, which when further cut into approx 15 inch pieces, make great paint stirrers.

On to the Paintshop where Keith is giving the newly created vacuum cylinder support frame a coat of yellow paint.

In fact Keith had a host of jobs awaiting him, including giving a final coat of varnish to the lamp frames destined for the new building at Toddington. These will be reconstructed and taken up on Thursday. In the forground more of TK 24006's beading, cleaned up and ready for varnishing.

Now on to progress with BSK 34929, with the Malvern side painting not far from completion. Maurice adds a second top coat to the section between the centre passenger and guards doors, in effect completing the maroon painting on this side.

Stu meanwhile has taped up both the upper and lower lines from the guards door to the south end, and begins adding the black centre section of the lower line.

Returning later on to find the job completed and the lower line tapes being removed.

Maurice took a break from lining out and instead black glossed the door handles and stops.

It was good to see Russ back in. The first job of the day was to look over the counter and store area in RMB 1808 which he will be manning when the 3rd Rake is used for our Santa Specials between Toddington and Winchcombe. Then on to the Cotswold side north end door and corner area which is still in madder undercoat. A light sand down first to key the surface and remove any unwanted bits.

Then the first top coat of Maroon. It's good to see this door and area painted at last after all the earlier problems here.

The Cotswold side guards door had been undercoated but the paint finish was somewhat rough, as though bits had been blown onto the wet paint. Roger sands it down before applying a fresh coat of madder.

The next job was to key the initial top coating from the guards door frame to the south end ready for the second top coat.

Returning to the Malvern side to find the south end fully lined out, a real treat to see.

Finally, Dave H. brought in a hinge from his 1951-built TK 24006 to show me. Close inspection revealed the "B R ( M )" stamped on one of the blades, showing the coaches origin on the Midland Region, just three years after the railways were nationalised.

Monday 15th - Bacon Rolls are OFF!

 8 for Carriage Cleaning today. Unusual to be cleaning at this time in November but various events have conspired to create it. Not a problem, means we don't get rusty before the Santa Trains need cleaning.

There was in fact a lot going on at Toddington today. The first group we met were those dressing the station for Christmas. The Charity Santa trains run this coming Sunday. So Paul, Phil, Roger O and John started washing rake 1. Nigel P, Greg, Kath and myself were inside the same rake. Mark arrived after his regular Monday morning appointment.

Rake 1 was quite tidy so Kath and I loaded the kit to set off on the long trek to the DMU. Rake 2 was parked in the platform but was unused from our last clean so did not need attention today.

What had also been happening was that rake 1 (the one with the kitchen to make the bacon rolls) was being de-stocked. This year rakes 2 and 3 will be used for Santas and post-Christmas trains so your next bacon bap is March 5th next year! But the trains will still have the mini-buffets for after Christmas. Due to the slip repairs at Winchcombe (not at the railway's cost) after Christmas the trains will be top and tailed Winchcombe - Broadway.

After a very short while down at the DMU Mark, Greg and John joined us to complete that. John having already done the toilet check in rake 1 and doing that here as well.

The Gtech cleaners are the ideal tool for dealing with the first class carpet.

The remaining cleans this year are all post-Santa trains so that will be interesting!

Saturday 13th - The next project

With the gala done and dusted and the Queen Mary finished, there was a goods brake van shaped hole in our lives. Happily, today's main excitement (well, for those of us who like wagons it was exciting) was the extraction of the next major wagon project, the GWR Toad. It had briefly come into the works a couple of years ago for work to begin but other priorities came along and it managed to get rather buried in the sidings, necessitating quite a lot of shunting to extract it:

This ran in our goods train in galas up until 2017 when we ceased operating them, but by then it was getting very tired - the quick repaint we gave it way back in 2013 (one of the first vehicles I worked on as a volunteer) would only last so long, and I distinctly remember painting over some suspect wood and moss at the time!

This time the job will be much more substantial. It will have all new timber; floor, sides and roof, and quite a bit of metal replacement as well - around the veranda it's all fairly sound but the lower sides of the cabin are pretty shot. It will of course be properly sign-written this time too, and re-allocated to somewhere more local (research ongoing).

Even though it's just been parked outside the barn for now pending the completion of the Mink which it'll swap places with, Paul got stuck straight in undoing various nuts and bolts:

Meanwhile the Mink edges ever closer to completion with Richard fitting most of the remaining timber roof hoops:

Onto carriages then, and it was heartening to see focus decidedly shift to 16221 for some of the door team. Robert was drilling holes for the top hinge of the south door on the Cotswold side:

And Ainsley was making some adjustments to the door itself:

Later on and it was time for a test hang! Chris stopped by to offer some words of wisdom too:

At the other end George was doing what I think is the last of the filling required here, as later on I saw him grab a tin of dark grey undercoat which felt encouraging:

I think this is the final door requiring work on 34929, Steve was busy checking for sticking points, by the end of the day there was the usual pile of wood shavings after adjustment:

Inside Dave was fitting tables in the compartments:

While Dave was cleaning up brackets for more:

The Malvern side solebar was getting its coat of gloss by Pam

While on the Cotswold side I painted up the works plate and the star indicating the location of the vacuum release cord:

Out in the barn it was decided that today would be a good day to power wash the pair of bogies we've got in at the moment. Obviously this is best done outside, and many hands make light work when it comes to moving them:

I didn't get too close for the pictures!

Paul and Dennis meanwhile were cleaning the windowlene off some of the carriages destined to go into a remarshalled rake for Santa trains:

It must have been a bit tricky for them when their coaches kept being moved around during all the shunting to extract the Toad, a couple were briefly parked in the barn.

Dave was in working on 24006 but I'm afraid I missed him, but I did capture Phil working on some heating control units for it in the workshop:

Upstairs in upholstery the production line for the bubble car is in full flow, John fitting padding to another seat back:

While Jenny was on the sewing machine with the moquette:

Although normal service trains have ceased, entertainment today was provided in the form of a race train to take punters to Cheltenham and back again, plus a fish and chip lunch in the middle of the day to take advantage of the train being in service anyway:

Thursday 11th - Another brilliant creation

Another busy C&W day with our metalwork team in to boost the attendance. They will be back to Wednesday next week.

Firstly a photo from Wednesday taken in the Upholstery shop by Dave H. Jenny holds up a seat back for a three seat unit from the Bubblecar 55003.  New member Stephen and Dave repaired the frame, and then Stephen completely replaced the outside back panel.  As John H. (Head of Upholstery) says, it's a pity most of what we do gets covered up!

Beginning Thursday's activities with the Indoor Gang, both Alan and Roger completed the work in the new disabled compartment in BSK 34929. Alan fits the lock keyhole cap on the south end sliding door.

Alan and Roger then attached the little L-shaped brackets securing the table legs to the floor. Roger had to make some minor adjustments to the wall fitting for this table.

It was then into SK 25341 to remove the protective film of Windowlene from the windows (put on earlier this year to reduce the fading affect of the sun on the moquette). This coach will be added to the 3rd Rake on the Malvern side of the yard., which is being used for this year's Santa specials as almost all the coaches are compartmented.

Meanwhile Dennis had been through all the 3rd Rake coaches attaching "Out of use" notices to the toilet doors. With embankment repairs being done for the next few months in the cutting approaching the tunnel, Santa trains will be limited to the short 3 miles run between Toddington and Winchcombe.

Another job that has been waiting in the wings for the metalwork team is to fix bases to these metal posts, which will be used instead of the metal stakes to mark out the public viewing area at the Barn entrance during galas. Nick sets up the base sections for this one.

These will be so much better than the stakes, which can be very difficult to bang into the hard ground.

Wow, what's this Bryan and Rex are trying out?

It turns out to be another very useful tool created by the metalwork/engineering team for  lowering and raising the very heavy vacuum cylinders. A completely successful trial and great improvement on the way we used to have to do this job, well done chaps!

The new tool now coated in oxide and ready for the Paintshop.

Now up to the mezzanine to the Electrical Team's den, where Richard is working on a faulty light fixing from a 3rd Rake coach, while Steve is attaching more LED units to the large heat sink plates.

Richard has found the necessary replacement part in the plastic unit for fitting to the large metal unit on the bench.

In the Barn John is applying a black paint patch to allow numbering to the ends of the two bogies that were from underneath the old Loco Dept Mess Coach, which has been sold. As the coach will be static in its new location we were allowed to replace the bogies with one's we no longer required.

Jeff, C&W's Finance Manager, holds a meeting with Nick, Head of Metalwork, to discuss the new budget allocation for that team. It's good to have a budget again now we are slowly recovering from the Pandemic restrictions and our trains are once again catering for good numbers of passengers, but it will be a while yet before we are back to 2019 allowances.

Finally back to the Paintshop and good progress with the Malvern side of BSK 34929. With the top line yellow section completed on most of this side, Phil applies the low tack tape to the south end of the coach to enable the painting of the lower black section.

Down below at the north end Jeff tapes up for the middle black section of the lower line, the outer yellow sections being done on Tuesday.

Tape in place, so on with the black gloss. Unlike the yellow, one coat of this will be sufficient.

Bottom line done, so on to the top line taping. Jeff then proceeded to get the lower black section of this line painted.

Job done, so he now very carefully removes the two lines of tape so as not to remove any underlying top coat. I was busy with the guards door entrance on the Cotswold side, so when later joining Jeff, I was only able to get about a third of the lower line painted black. We'll be back to all this on Saturday.