May News Part 3

Great Eastern Railway 1899 4 Wheel Brake Third 853

Repainting work has focused on the guards brake area where the first areas of gloss have now been applied. As promised in previous updates are some images of the rear gas lamp tail light, as produced by Mr Axeman himself:

Great Eastern Railway 1884 Wisbech & Upwell Tramcar 7

Work to strengthen the bufferbeams has been started and good progress has been made. A section of spare boiler plate was recently sighted with "Axeman" chalked onto it, and said plate has now been cut down into the relevant shapes and stick welded into position each side of the draw hooks on the verandas and each end. The engineering department also assisted with some of the more unusual welds.

British Railways 1957 Mark 1 Tourist Second Open E4641

The seat framing parts (including legs) mentioned last week have now been undercoated and gloss black painted ready for assembly hopefully next week. The sixteen metal boxes which contain light bulbs (also pictured last week) also reached completion this week after they were spray painted with several coats. These have now all been fitted to the coach interior, which is starting to approach completion along the two sides. Additionally, the Holt end saloon has also received its luggage racks which represent one of the final fittings required on the sides. As we are fast approaching the stage where components will be fitted to the floor (we are working generally from the top down) the floor has just been painted in green floor paint to improve its condition, which has transformed the interior once more. A great deal of clearing, hoovering and washing was required to reach the stage where the floor could be painted!

British Railways 1955 Mark 1 Suburban Composite Lavatory E43041

The steel re-paneling has continued around the toilet window on the landward side. This window had completely disintegrated so a brand new centre section, which incorporates the ventilation grill (blast vent?!?), has been fabricated and is in the process of being welded in.

Meanwhile, the compartment window surround woodwork marches on towards completion, with more rubbing down and varnishing evident.

British Railways 1955 Mark 1 Suburban Third Lavatory Open E48001

The Holt end bogie has come on leaps and bounds this week with the painting fully finished (three coats leading up to gloss black) in an intensive couple of days.

Towards the end of the week this has allowed the wheelsets to be reunited with the axle-boxes and the bogie lowered back onto its wheels and springs, which have all been refurbished. It is looking rather complete now, with just a few bits of brake rodding and ancillary bits now being cleaned up and repainted to complete the job.

The completion of the interior paneling last week has allowed a degree of clearing up and stock taking to be done on the interior, which coincidentally has now pretty much reached the exact same stage that E4641 has. This lead to the bright idea of painting the floor at the same time, so after much more brushing and traipsing around on hand and knee, this coach has also had its floor transformed into green... We have now effectively locked ourselves out of two whole coaches as the floor paint is allowed a decent length of time to dry!

Workshop

The nameplates for Black Prince have been finished and look very smart indeed. They will now be refitted to the loco shortly as we have handed them back to our friends in the Locomotive Department.