Wednesday 22nd - Up on the roof

 The title tells the beginning of today's story. RBr 1675 had a couple of shall we say extra holes which are not needed.  Fortunately from a safety aspect they were get-at-able from the high tower.

It has its challenges getting up here, especially when you try to remember everything you will need.

 Fortunately Gerry was on hand and responded to my calls for help, and handed tools, etc, through an open window.

 I took the opportunity to photo Rod who was busy with a door fit. You cannot see it in the photo but I am surrounded by the previously mentioned scaffold tower.

Bryan and Rex have started on the fitting of the generator on 1675. They assure me the first parts will be lifting brackets and Bryan is making a start.

And there it is .... the generator!

Back inside 1675 Simon carries on with panelling and seems very happy in his work.

David is further down the carriage with more panelling.

Rex is busy making brackets .... not sure what for.

Not to mention another window going in.

Chris very kindly offered to help me, and is cutting a piece of corridor connection support pillar for FK 13326.

All of the main sections are now in on the south end of 13326, almost ready for the new outer skin

Tom, Geoff and Simon are wrestling with the north end sliding door on 1675. They sorted it as they always do.

 Rounding off with our very busy upholstery dept. Working here on the second set for the Dean Forest Railway.

That's it for another week ...... many thanks to Gerry for the photos.

Tuesday 21st - Cracking on

Another good day's effort by the Tuesday team, especially with SK 25488 which inevitably had the most activity.

Stu was once again in fired-up mode and, after a light sand with 240 paper, gave the entire lower section a second top coat and in effect completing the top coating on the Malvern side. The line and end demarcation tapes can now be removed and lining out begin.

Richard began second top coating the windows on the Cotswold side, and that too was completed for the whole side.

Ian worked at the north end, initially undercoating inside the corridor connection. The combination of an early start and warm Paintshop meant that the undercoat dried quickly and later in the day he was able to add the gloss black. The outside of the U frame and support woodwork was also glossed.

Roger black glossed the remaining unpainted section of the Cotswold side sole bar and steps, before moving round to the Malvern side and completing that too.

 

 

No stopping Stu, who added a second top coat to the south end of the Cotswold side top section.

 

Another cleaned up buffer and surround ready for priming and painting, which was done by myself and then Roger. We are limiting what we will do with any underframe painting.

 

Too tired to smile. Not surprising after all that effort, but a great job done.

 

 Keith had a busy trestle day, initially top coating the door from the south corridor connection of 25488. Then various bits of priming for the two vacuum cyclinder release valves, a special metal bar used by the Dirty Gang, some sections for the roof ends of the Tool Van made by Robert, a large roof section again for the Tool Van, and finishing off with a second coat of varnish for the handrails from RBr 1675.  Guess we must get back to that chair which has almost become part of the general scenery!

 

Inside the Tool Van Maurice continues painting the ceiling.

 

One of the Malvern side quarter doors on RBr 1675 was removed by Ainsley and myself, so that some tidying up could be done, followed by the fitting of the back panel.

 

 

 

Stu finished his day adding a second coat of yellow to the numbers and letters on the Cotswold side of the Tool Van

 

 *************************

 

So, what else happened.

 

Firstly apologies to Robert, Derek and Dave H. who I missed. When walking around to obtain blog photos, more often than not, the person you are looking for is either absent from their work area, or in conversation, or simply not doing what you wanted to capture. It really is pot luck sometimes getting the right picture at the right moment.

I also meant to get a photo of Bob, who on inspecting the roofs of the Maroon Rake (now stabled in Platform 2 at Winchcombe) discovered some flaking paint on the Malvern side of the roof of BSKD 34929 - thankfully it was just this area and not higher up.. Particularly frustrating as it's not that long ago that the coach was refurbished. Bob carefully scraped off the loose top coat (the undercoat was fine), thoroughly cleaned the area and then applied some fresh top coat.

The long awaited skip lorry arrived. Yahoo! We could then empty all the overflowing bins throughout the Works.

The final job of the day was to tidy up the Paintshop and vac the floor, before getting changed and then retiring to the Mess Room for that last cup of tea, and for once resisting the cakes!

Monday 20th - Home and Away

 We are in to the Santa Season, so rake 1 is at Toddington and rake 2 is stabled at Winchcombe. So the away team is Nigel, Rich, Greg and Lynn. The home team was David, Jane, Kath, Paul, Roger C, Steve (new recruit) Tim and Val. 13 in total including your scribe.

Here are Val and Steve checking that "Mary" has been completed. No question of cleaning luggage racks today!

Roger C, Val and Kath having a post clean chat.

While Tim, Paul and Steve carry on working giving the windows a further clean - the train had already been washed.

The Away Team don't send me any photos, so you will just have to use your imagination for them!

This is the routine every Monday up to and including December 18th.

Saturday 18th - A very productive day

 A good day today, with a number of significant jobs ticked off, along with a very productive meeting with our HR director about some future plans.

First job then, steam heat pipework on FK 13329 in the barn. John was back and Stuart had very thoughtfull done all the grotty bits of chopping out the rubbish bits of pipe, leaving John and Andy to claim all the glory with the nicer job of cutting the new bits of pipe...

...And putting it all back together, complete with 'sheep's head' fitting. Another leak ticked off the list and a job well done.

Naturally the drawhooks are coming out for a tail pin change, Ian and Clive lower down the buckeye.

Later on and the main drawhook is out, with Andy giving it a scrape. 

Spot the new component!

Indeed the dirty gang were on such a roll today they even started taking apart the drawgear on the other end, altohugh it was a bit late in the day to be doing the heavy lifting Clive and Andy did all the prep.

Tool van 92 is inching towards completion, Chris was going round with the glue and canvas offcuts to seal in those corners of the frames, before a liberal coating of flexacryl goes over everything.

While Maurice and I worked our way round battening the canvas down either side.

A pretty neat job if we do say so ourselves. Just the ends to do now.

Despite it being a busy day in the works, we managed to nip out to see the train go past. Today was a race train going down to Cheltenham with a load of passengers, back empty, a Fish and Chip lunch in the middle with a second load, then go down and pick up the first lot of passengers again.

James was on 'works development' today fabricating a new metal box to hold our big heavy spanners.

Elsewhere on the metalworking front once again Alan was stuck into the North end of FK 13326

I spotted the 3 crash pillars at the South end that are still mostly extant had had new sections tacked in place as well.

Tea break time and something had piqued everyone's interest...

Ah, Phil's got a new toy, the new Accurascale OO gauge Cl.37, very nice!

To the RBr then, and Robert was back on capping strips.

Slow and steady wins the race as ever. Ben in the background at a similar pace.

progress inside is more visually speedy, Simon putting in more panelling.

Onto the SK, just Dave from the painting today, working on tidying up the North corridor connection.

The South end is looking pretty spick and span now, apart from a manky old wooden mounting block for the electrical connector which we decided to have off. Phil sorts out a replacement one.

Just a small amount of shunting today to pull the wagons out from alongside the shed to clear access for the gutters to be cleared during the week.

All formed up but nowhere to go...

That's it for this week, so I'll leave you with a video of P&O bring the merry racegoers back from Cheltenham after dark, just before we left for the day.