Evening all, and thank you for joining us lot from Quorn for another update. This week 3689 has received its second coat of gloss and both tanks have started being detailed. We’ve also got the Lowfit and the Conflat ready to re-enter traffic which should be some point this week.
Saturday wasn’t the day for painting, however we had another mission after an accident last week. Charlie had a go at testing gravity last week and fell between the dock and the toolvan. Charlie is, thankfully, okay with a dent to his pride and a sore shoulder. Its a sobering reminder of the environment we work in however and as such we’ve taken another look at the high traffic doorways onto the dock and made some changes to ensure that this can’t happen again for the high traffic doorways. Nick constructed an extended step for the toolvan which sits on the dock and the van’s chassis. We may look to make a more permanent solution in due course.
Looking at the GUV, we decided to weld the stepboard brackets back onto the vehicle to put a stepboard on. The stepboards and brackets were removed by BR when the GUVs went into BRUTE traffic. Ernie prepared some brackets ready to weld into position from a scrap brakevan step bracket.
I took a decent look over both the Lowfit and the Conflat to sort out the paperwork to release them to traffic. All was well aside from an aged vacuum hose on the Conflat. These wagons can now enter traffic and clear some space in the yard for us to bring a few more vehicle up in need of our care.
Sunday was the better day weather wise so Oliver and I set about painting the second coat on 3689. The painting went well however the radiator on the Test Car’s generator has sprung a leak from one of the cores so we’ll have to sort that out before using it again. I suspect its the same leak that we had when we first fired up the generator back in 2018, so might just be a case of more Rad-Weld. Thankfully we were able to fire up Edward for a short stint to finish painting the tank.
Ernie got the welder out and welded the stepboard brackets back onto the GUV and Nick sorted out a step board and bolted it down.
Charlie (on light duties) washed Hector, looked at the defective horn button and then fitted him with a two tone air horn. We also took Danny to sort out some rubbish and recover some barrels from the yard.
Mark and Tom made light work of detailing the two tanks, removing the overspray from the buffer shanks then painting the axle end caps, the white bits (handbrake ends, lamp brackets etc) and the red on the vacuum swan necks. They also went up to the Conflat and Lowfit and repainted the swan necks on them after not being happy with the shade of red used.
With the paint on the tanks now sat hardening, we can now look at starting the signwriting on the tanks and make a start on working down refreshing the east side of the van train, plus the endless work on the plant which seems to keep us on our toes! Join us again next week to see what we get up to! Cheers, Ross
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