With the bridge works progressing we were pleased to see a two of our engineers wagons being put to good use to transport new bridge deck parts from Quorn Yard to the worksite. These being the 1949 built Salmon DB996000 and 1956 built Sturgeon A DB994240.
Work continues for us on the Plate wagon E212315. The wagon had been moved during the week to the south end of Quorn Yard closer to our mess coach. Before we started Nick fitted a temporary lamp bracket so we could fit a Not to be Moved board.
Nick and myself removed the temporarily fitted spacer timbers to allow them to dry-out for painting, then progressing some underframe scraping and removal of the east side rotten card clip timber.
We measured up the internal dimensions of the Plate so we could assess how many floor planks would be required. Based on a nominal 7″ plank width this worked out at 46 planks.
We were joined later on by David who has expressed a wish to help the group for a while. Together the 3 of us set about sorting and measuring up suitable candidates of floor planking from our stored pile.
Thankfully we managed to find enough planks of the same thickness, however most of the planks still had quite a few nails in the sides from their previous use. We then set about removing the nails, or grinding off the stubborn ones.
By the end of the afternoon all 46 planks were de-nailed and ready for trimming to length.
Nick and Ross were on site on Sunday, picking up where Saturday left off. The floor bearers that were removed from the wagon were treated to some cut end solution on the cut edges. They then set up the chop saw and started cuttinf one end of the planks sorted yesterday.
The other end got the same treatment, using an end stop on the chop saw stand.
A pile of planks soon appeared all a consistent length, though some were cut shorter for around the door hinge rivets.
With the floor now cut, Nick painted the back of the floor bearers in bitumastic paint before these were fitted to the wagon. Ross then painted the top of the bearers in the same paint.
The floor then started to be laid in, starting from the north end.
The resultant gap at the south end ended up being 9.5 inches,which meant 2 boards had to be ripped down the length to fill the gap. Once these had been cut, Nick applied the cut end solution.
Nick and Ross finished the day with a complete floor laid in the wagon.
There’s still the job of getting the boards to sit down properly where there are the rivet heads from the underframe, but that is a job for another weekend. Thanks for reading!
Leave a Reply