With Mike and Paul away on holiday it was left to John and Tim to continue with the work on the RMB. John discovered that, when lettering the west end of the RMB, Tim hadn’t left much room for the re-installation of the vacuum pipe that connects to the communication cord valve. That meant either re-lettering the end of the RMB or John making some adjustments to the pipe which, as a true gentleman, he did! Phew! 
John also removed and repaired one of the toilet heater coils, which he is seen here inspecting. Meanwhile, at the other end of the RMB, Tim undercoated and then gloss coated the east end. Lettering and varnishing are still required when there is a break in the dust.
After hearing that we had made good use of the shelves that he had donated to the Trust, Michael Cook kindly arranged for the delivery of another set, which David promptly erected on Saturday. Thank you Michael – very much appreciated.
Adrian continued his assault on Caliban‘s frames with the needle gun and cup wire brush on Wednesday. 
The new piece of running board, having received two coats of primer and undercoat underneath, was mounted on top of the frames. Alan then went on to remove another piece of plate.
George appeared on Friday and worked with Keith to place some of Wootton Hall‘s scrap metal in the newly provided waste skip outside the shed. 
Fred cleaned up Wootton Hall‘s vacuum reservoir whilst Roger primed Caliban‘s wheels.
The task of procuring new components for the Trust can have unexpected repercussions. We’ve previously had Alan arriving home to find FR 20’s new cab spectacle plate outside his home in Blackpool, or David having to inform the driver of an articulated lorry that was trying to access his suburban road in Huyton that his delivery had been arranged to go to Appleby, not Huyton. So, this week we have the good news that the newly cast ejector ring for 5643 has now been delivered – the bad news is that the pallet load needs to be humped into the back of Tim’s estate car at Cark to be moved on down to Preston! Mrs O thought that it was all rather funny until she realised that she would need to give a hand with the lift!
The RSR’s Steam Gala over last weekend was well patronised and saw the guest appearance of Peckett 0-4-0ST No. 1163 Whitehead from the Midland Railway Centre. Keith, Alan and Tim were in action on the locomotives, whilst Alison made some useful money with the sales stand and young Matthew provided some useful assistance to the Family Focus Group in the museum.
This next Saturday sees our fund-raising folk band Live Steam in action at Out Rawcliffe Village Hall in the wilds of North Fylde. Will they ever make it to the Albert Hall?! Another practice is being held at Cark on Wednesday evening, although it maybe preceded by a weight lifting session (see above).
Finally another reminder that the final Preston Branch meeting of this season will take place at 8 pm on Tuesday evening, 11th April, at The Ale Emporium, Preston. Archive steam video will be screened.
It was a quieter day at Preston on Wednesday with Alan braving the snow to go to Shildon once the snow gates on the A66 had been lifted. Tim was also away which left John working away sanding gangway metalwork at the east end of the RMB whilst Mike continued the reassembly of the toilets. 
David has now finished the assembly of the new shelving in the first class North London Railway coach body and he and Tim spent some time on Saturday stacking paint cans and other C&W consumables from the interior of the RMB.
However, Adrian broke the silence in the shed with the needlegun around Caliban‘s valve chest. 
Howard is still busy with Caliban‘s new lubrication boxes, making stands for them, and happy that his precious knife and fork survived the fall of the North London Carriage door on his tool box last week, which didn’t fare as well.
Keith has been removing more platework and also the vacuum reservoir from Wootton Hall in readiness for Fred and Roger to clean and apply primer paint. 
Last week’s output from Fred is seen here.
Alan is seen here on the footplate on Thursday whilst Tim is seen acting as guard with Martin Clark on Friday whilst Anthony Coulls is assessed.
The Ribble Steam Railway’s Diesel gala took place over last Saturday and Sunday and the photo of visiting Colas locomotive 60047 shows it outside the RSR running shed during the driver’s lunch break on Saturday. This next weekend will see the RSR’s Steam Gala with four engines in steam, which will keep Keith, Alan and Tim busy.
The seemingly never ending work on the RMB continued again this week. John has just about finished his endeavours at the east end of the coach and it is seen here ready for the final coats of paint – the view rather belies the amount of work that John has put in to bring the metalwork back up to standard. John is aiming to get around to the west end next week in order to re-instate the passenger operated brake mechanism, otherwise known as the communication cord. This will enable the panelling on the south side toilet to be completed after the communication cord has been permanently re-attached to the frame of the coach. 
Mike Rigg has been busy completing the re-installation of fittings in the north side toilet and can be seen here contemplating his next move. 
Paul is seen cleaning the door ready for fitting.
With a need to start emptying the RMB, which has acted as a store in recent years, David has been erecting the shelving, kindly donated by Michael Cook, in the first class North London Railway coach body. It is seen here in partially constructed condition. David has now finished the job and some of the equipment has already been moved over. However, at Adrian’s suggestion, David took it upon himself to clean the windows of our new store so that we can see our way around only to find that most of the muck removed was Adrian’s dust! Just need now to replace the exterior door which fell off on Saturday..
Alan is seen here with paint brush in hand putting red oxide on what will be the underside of the new piece of Caliban‘s running board after having received tips of the trade on painting from none other than Adrian! Some grey undercoat was subsequently applied on Friday by the C&W team.
Keith has also removed some of the engine’s platework adjacent to the front bufferbeam so that it can be cleaned up and painted. 
Fred took on the challenge of wire brushing the plate on Friday and can be seen at work here.
Road four in the unheated area of the new shed received ballast up to the top of the sleepers, as can be seen in this photo where Keith is watching Phil Preston operate the hydraulic grab on the RSR TRAM. The day when we will be concreting (or the ‘C’ word as John termed it last week) again draws ever closer.
Mike Rigg has almost completed the re-installation of panelling in the first of the RMB toilets. A clear out of the vast amount of paraphernalia in the RMB – some useful and some for the skip – has started and David Rimmer is clearing a space in the first class North London Railway coach body to accommodate the useful items. Michael Cook kindly donated some shelving a little while ago and it is planned to erect this in the coming week or so.
In addition, Paul Newton is breathing new life into the old RSR paint cupboard in readiness to receive the paint cans that are currently stored in the RMB.
Keith has also been busy with the new water collection chamber which will eventually be fastened under the new tender tank for Wootton Hall, when commissioned. As can be seen from the photo, it is now getting to the paint stage.
Mike and Tim finished cleaning the windows on the RMB last Wednesday and Mike and Paul are seen here making a start on cleaning up the brass handles ready for fitting. 
Paul has also been filing the new letter B for the gas compartment cover. 
The temporary absence of Tom and Trevor has been felt in that it is now time to re-assemble the internal panelling and Mike started the work by cleaning down the various components in the south side toilet – not a job to be relished. He is seen here re-installing a pelmet for one of the saloon compartment doors.
Alan continued to drill holes in the new piece of running board. We refrained from including yet more photos of Fred and Roger at work on Caliban‘s wheels although it can be reported that they have recently changed sides!
The newly acquired lubrication valves for Wootton Hall have now been fitted in position on the smokebox. This view of the right hand side shows the sole regulator lubrication valve above one of the two cylinder lubrication valves -the other being fitted to the left hand side of the smokebox.
Both Wednesday and Friday saw efforts made to bring the RMB’s windows up to serviceable standard, with Tim, Mike (see above) and Paul brandishing scrapers and cleaning rags to get rid of paint and ingrained dirt.
… and the finished welded job:
So So plenty of work for Tim next Wednesday with the filler and sander to remove all traces of the repair.
Paul and Mike have had a second attempt at creating a plaster of Paris mould for the plate to go on the new gas compartment door on the RMB. This time they were successful, and the next job is to use some casting resin to create the plate itself. Meanwhile, Paul has been creating a new letter ‘B’ to go on the door, and is seen here removing some of the waste metal with the aid of a pillar drill:
Howard has been making progress with one of the new lubrication boxes, with the machined casting seen here.
Fred and Roger have again been hard at work on the wheels – this week’s photos look very much like last week’s – did they ever go home? 
Alan, incidentally, brought in birthday cakes for everyone on Wednesday, and some of the gang can be seen seated around the table enjoying the results of Alison’s baking.
Keith continues to gather together components for Wootton Hall, including the new cylinder lubrication valves seen here. Meanwhile George has again been working on the old tubes.
With the RMB successfully varnished last Monday, work on the east corridor end has resumed in earnest with John tackling the repairs on the north east corner and Tim applying filler and sander to the south west corner. Most of the door frames are now painted and protective masking tape has been removed from door handles ready for them to be polished. Now that the surrounding paint has had chance to harden, work on cleaning the windows, both inside and outside, is expected to commence in earnest this next week.
Howard has been preparing newly cast brass lubrication pots for use on Caliban. 
The dust curfew in the shed had to be unexpectedly maintained on Wednesday as Adrian had plans to paint the inside of Caliban‘s frames under the cab. An inspection on Friday revealed that Adrian had managed to put a liberal amount on the shed and pit floors and also the one of the pit boards! 
Fred broke the dust curfew on Friday, cleaning up Caliban‘s wheels, whilst Roger continued his painstaking task of chipping paint from the wheel spokes.
All went well over the weekend and Alison made some useful sales income as well as receiving some donated items from the Friends of the NRM’s north east branch – well done, and thanks also to the Friends!
The trackwork out the shed has now been pronounced “complete”, with everything in place and ballasted. Again, well done to all concerned for completing this within a relatively short timescale and in some pretty cold weather at times.
The lack of dust from other projects in the shed whilst the RMB has been painted has been very much appreciated, but normal services can be resumed from Wednesday. 
John has again been busy completing repairs to the bodywork and floor at the east end of the coach, and the paintwork here will be undertaken once the work has finished. 
Paul appeared on Friday and is seen here painting the side of one of the bogies in gloss black. It has to be reported, though, that the project to create a new plate for the side of the gas storage door suffered a setback for, when Paul removed the plaster of Paris mould, it was found that some of the lettering was unclear – perhaps the mould had been left in place for too long. Another attempt will be made when some proper release agent has been acquired.
Work has continued apace on Caliban, with Adrian using the dust curfew to paint the frames with a fetching shade of pink undercoat. Likewise, Fred and Roger have been sorting out components in a dust free manner, and Alan has been drilling holes in a new section of running board.
Looking forward to next weekend, Furness Railway No. 20 is back in steam at Locomotion, Shildon, and Alan and Sam (seen here under FR 20) paid a flying visit there on Friday to prepare the loco with the assistance of Brian Goodfellow. He will no doubt be glad to see that the weather for the end of the week is forecast to warm up a little.
More paint has been added to the sides of the RMB this week as work has moved on to applying a gloss finish. A final coat of varnish will be added by John and Tim, hopefully next Monday.
Mike and Paul, meanwhile, have been working on creating a sign for the RMB’s new gas door cover. This has involved delving back into likes of old Blue Peter annuals to re-discover the joys of using plaster of Paris to create a mould from the other door cover from which a new sign can be cast. We see here Paul preparing the existing sign with a release agent. News of success or failure on this particular project will be brought to you in future blogs!
With a temporary dust ban in place in the shed this week, we were again spared the noise of the needle gun as Adrian resorted to using a paint brush instead. Alan and John were engaged in the dust-free project of assembling a new parts washer, which has been kindly donated to the FRT along with a supply of paraffin. This should make the cleaning of greasy/oily components much easier in the future. Fred and Roger appeared on Friday and also managed to find dust-free jobs on which to be engaged in progressing Caliban‘s overhaul.
The big news this week is that road four of the shed is now connected to the rest of the RSR’s network. The photographs show the newly-laid rails on the right hand side and also the Ribble Rail staff drilling the final bolt hole to enable fishplates to be attached. The lead into road four still needs more ballast and packing, but the job is well on the way to being completed. Congratulations all round to those who have worked so hard to achieve this.
Inside the shed, work has continued on the RMB, with John still coming up with solutions to repair the floor at the east end of the coach. There has also been further work on the new gas holder door and the new paint store by Mike and Paul. Tim has been busy masking off and painting the sides in undercoat.
Fred and Roger appeared on Friday to continue their works on cleaning up components. We welcomed Howard as a new member on Wednesday when he took advantage of the January transfer window to move across and help us with Caliban. Howard is pictured here working on the 0-4-0ST’s right-hand cylinder end studs.