The blog has been written a day early this week as a busy Monday awaits!
Firstly, we need to wish Keith a Happy Birthday for Monday. Keith is taking the day off, but the Preston Branch meeting on Tuesday evening (8 pm at The Ale Emporium, Fylde Road, Preston) will give you the opportunity to pass on your birthday wishes!
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.
Inside the shed, the lining and lettering on the RMB has now been completed and – in a late addition to this week’s blog – has now been varnished too. 
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.
Keith has been busy re-fixing the loose valve head on 5643 before heading over to Embsay with George yesterday to undertake some more winter maintenance on the loco.
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.
Work continues apace at Preston on the RMB as the finishing line is now just about in sight, even if it is still somewhat in the distance. John has been welding door handles on to the new gas box which Mike and Paul have been working on during the last month or so. The handles allow the door to be locked into place on the vehicle.
John has also been busy making a hole in the floor of the south facing doorway at the east end of the coach. John came across the rot in the wood floor whilst repairing the steel ribs at the corridor end. When the subject of this unexpected additional work being found so late on in the repair process was raised, John became very philosophical, repeating Donald Rumsfeld’s famous quote, when he was US Secretary of State for Defense (sorry, but we had better use the US spelling!) in February 2002, that ‘there are known knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don’t know.’ That only leaves us to hope that there aren’t too many more unknown unknowns left on this particular coach!
Meanwhile, with John still engaged on looking into the unexpected hole in the floor, Tim has started in earnest the process of painting the sides of the carriage, with some of the sliding windows and door window edges now sporting the final gloss colour of cream. On learning that some serious painting sessions were imminent, both Adrian and Fred have enquired as to whether they can have a few days off from making dust, with Fred rather fancying some extended time in the mess room brewing tea! Needless to say, it is to be hoped that there will be as little disruption to the dust making processes on Caliban as possible. The following photos show both Adrian and Fred hard at work on the frames and the eccentric straps.
Alan, John H and Sam have also been at work on the loco, with Alan pictured here running a die nut over the some of the cylinder end studs.
Outside, Mike has been cleaning up the steel cabinet which we intend to use as a paint store – this will become necessary as we move out the various cans of paint that have been stored in the RMB in recent years.
The track work outside the shed has made good progress, as can be seen from the above photos, with road three of the shed now re-connected to the rest of the RSR and, therefore, the national network and thenceforth the line to Russia! The sleepers for road four are also now in position. Well done to all concerned (Russ, Ed, Keith, George, Phil and Mike McA), for the weather has sometimes been bitterly cold, not to mention very wet.
Inside the warmth of the shed, John has again been working on repairs to the east end of the RMB, which has required replacing some of the floor and various areas of steelwork. Tim has finished sanding and filling the sides of the RMB and has embarked on applying some undercoat in readiness for the main paint job, which he hopes to commence shortly.
One job on the RMB that has lingered on the ‘jobs to do’ list for far too long has been the replacement of the south side toilet window. Trevor had constructed a template some while ago, but no-one had got around to sourcing the new glass. However, with the list other jobs now diminishing, it was decided that the new window must be sourced. A search through the RSR’s spares failed to find a second hand pane that would fit and so a final examination of the FRT’s CCT store was made and, much to our surprise, Mike found a sheet of toughened glass to the correct size, although it did not have the required ‘frosted’ opaque finish that gives the necessary privacy to those using the loo. A quick search of the internet enabled a plastic film to be acquired for the princely sum of £6, and Mike and Paul are seen here fitting the film to the newly cleaned sheet of glass, which is now securely fitted to the RMB. So, another job crossed off the list.
Alan, John H, Adrian, Sam, Fred and Roger have continued their labours to clean up the frames, wheels and components on Caliban and to free up parts that have seized through lack of use over the past thirty years. Roger can be seen chipping paint off the wheels, Fred removing another component, and Alan and Adrian at work on the frames.
This last Wednesday saw Caliban‘s eccentric straps being removed leaving Fred the job of cleaning them up on Friday.
And so we come to Wootton Hall where Keith has been constructing a replacement water collection tank that is fitted beneath the tender tank and contains the two filters, one for each delivery pipe to the injectors.
Alison very kindly provided the Wednesday Gang on the 4th January with a fresh supply of mince pies (yum, yum) and also brought in the December takings from the sales stand, which David is seen counting here. There were also vanilla slices on hand last Friday to celebrate Tim’s birthday.