This week the team has been split, with Madge getting the attention at Quorn whilst the Coal Hopper saw progress at Rothley.
The Coal Hopper has been at Rothley for a while now and the decision was taken some time ago to get it painted before we move back to Quorn. A few weeks ago, Dan, Tom and Oliver scraped the wagon down. During this week, Thomas painted the inside of the hopper which then leaves us with the outside and the underframe. The underframe painting will come later, so Ross and Nick focused on the outside of the hopper. With Nick spotting, Ross made good time in spraying the hopper into the now familiar pink dark red undercoat.
Matt and myself were joined by Jack to make a start on Madge’s restoration. The garage was tidied and our collection of Scarab spares sorted through to see what may or may not be useable.
Once we had the garage workspace cleared we got stuck into the careful dismantling and labelling of parts from Madge. The first goal being to remove the cab so the terminal tin-worm that has taken hold in some of the panels can be attended to.
The cab doors were removed followed by the nose end, bumper, windows, seats, cab floor and nose end partition panels. She is now looking somewhat naked.
The next stage will be to unbolt the cab structure and remove so we can fully assess the panel work required, especially around the lower edges.
Back at Rothley Ross with Mark spotting, painted the hopper with 2 coats of Bauxite Gloss.
Nick with Dan and Tom took the wheelset swapped out of 3711 back to Quorn. When back at Rothley, Nick with Mark, Dan and Tom got the paint bruhses out, painting around the top of the hopper, and touching in some areas not easy to get with the spray gun. The team then moved onto black gloss on the underframe.
Ross took a look at the bearings on the ‘new’ wheelset fitted to 3711. A visual inspection and a grease purge is all that was required.
Lilibet helped out with some rubbish removal trips to the skip, showing off the new yellow British Railways livery on the shortened trailer that Matt has been working on.
Thanks for reading, join us again next week, all the best; Dave
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