Great Eastern Railway 1899 4 Wheel Brake Third 853
With most of the heritage labour transferred to the Gresley Buffet car, work on 853 has been mainly a continuation of previous weeks. Further work to produce door catch plates from rough castings is being undertaken as not all of the door closing "keep plates" that are located in the door apertures were available as originals.
The woodwork stained in "Jacobian Teak" is in the process of having varnish built up, one coat per day. The ash draught excluders are currently laid out undergoing this process. On the days that the restoration team are not in, Monkey has been standing guard against any passing antique dealers!
London North Eastern Railway 1937 Restaurant Buffet E9128E
Work has progressed very well. Both sides have now had all of the old lower paneling removed and the framework below cleaned up and de-nailed.
The next stage has been applying resin to the exposed timber framework. This is complete on the landward side with the seaward side ongoing.
Stage three, nailing on packing timbers to reduce the rebate for the new (thinner) paneling, again is complete on the landward side with the seaward side ongoing.
Finally, a test section of replacement paneling has been trialed on the seaward side kitchen door, just to prove the method of fixing before the main panels are purchased. The surprising part is the panel itself, which is a triple layered aluminium/plastic/aluminium composite and which has been chosen as the replacement for the original hardwood panels. This material is currently used in industry primarily for shop front signs and comes with its own painted protection already applied on both sides.
The original arrangement of two sets of horizontal panels running the length of the coach will be replaced by just one of the new material, eliminating some of the potential water ingress through the joins. Once the panels are fitted, the edges will be beaded as the wooden ones were. Where a joint has been eliminated, "false" beading will be added to retain the original appearance.
The option of replacing the panels with anything other than wood would have been impossible had the coach had a varnished finish, however now it is retaining its Crimson & Cream painted finish these panels are an interesting development. To a certain extent the panels are entering new ground and therefore are an experiment, so it will be interesting to see how successful they are. They may well be a breakthrough for carriage restoration!
British Railways 1959 Brake Corridor Composite E21224
Our Gold restoration project pleasingly continues to see a good amount of focus. The luggage space bulkhead wall, pictured last week, has reached the next stage and is now in primer. One of the windows between the guards and luggage area has also been scraped clear of paint, as the coach's previous owners had painted over the glass. We haven't bothered with the second window as this is a perspex example so we will swap this for proper glass in due course.
Sticking with the interior, the project for converting the heating system back to steam (from electric) is in full swing and a set of heating elements has been refitted into all of the passenger compartments. This involved plugging holes drilled for the electric heater conduits, and reopening holes which were used originally for the steam heaters, but were themselves plugged during the conversion to electric! We are putting all of the heaters in position now so that when we pipe underneath all of our "destinations" are present.
Underneath the coach, progress on scraping down the metalwork continues with several lucky stars putting in another week of hard graft to see the job closer to completion.
Some of the air brake components have been removed to be looked at and also top aid access for the underframe scrape. The main air reservoir is now removed and the complex distributor valve also removed. The latter has been opened up and is in good condition inside so won't receive any further attention other than cleaning up the outside.
The bogies, which haven't received any major attention yet, had a wheelset inspection and the news, confirmed by Monkey of course, was not good... After a warm cup of PG it was concluded that all four wheelsets are suffering from the flanges being out of profile and severe score marks around the main tyres themselves. Additionally, the tyres are thin and we are unsure whether there is enough metal left on them to turn out the current defects on the wheel lathe.
We have some suitable wheelsets as spares, but not many, so a combination of tyre turning and wheelset swapping may be required to balance out a reasonable set for use once the coach is overhauled. We shall see what we go for in due course...
The battery box covers continue to be cleaned up. The two covers for the seaward side battery box are now fully stripped and in primer.
British Railways 1959 Tourist Second Open M4843
No progress to report.
British Railways 1957 Tourist Second Open E4521
No progress to report.
Maintenance
Two members have been seconded to the shadowlands (Holt) to apply some wood preservative to the M&GN Society's garage where the M&GN Austin lorry lives. Long term readers may remember this lorry as it was here in the shed some time ago for its initial restoration and repaint into M&GN colours, shortly after acquisition by the Society.
New Members
There may be some new members joining C&W soon, details will be revealed in future postings...
No comments:
Post a Comment