Over the festive period we have made good progress with four box van roofs, salvaged some of the Lowfit’s rotten floor and made a start on the restoration of a vacuum brake cylinder.
23rd Dec – At Rothley, Nick, Ross, Mark and Tom stripped the roofs from B777171, B780282 and B779978. New roof sheets were opened out and rolled up to be lifted on to the roof of each van. Dan, Oliver and Charlie cleaning the sheets and tidying up. By the end of the day, each van was sat with a sheet resting on its roof.
24th Dec – Nick, Ross, Mark and Tom fixed down the roof sheet at each end and along the sides of B777171. The top door frame was refitted to both sides and the roof sheet fully fitted and finished. The roof coverings of P18422 were removed down to the bare wood. Oliver and Charlie assisting tiding up the old roof coverings then cleaning and painting the roof hoops.
27th Dec – The roof was prepared on P18422, the sheet laid out and lifted onto the van for rolling out. The roof hoops were fixed on B779978 & B780282, and both sides fixed down aside from around the door frames due to rotten door top frames.
28th Dec – Nick, Ross, Ernie, Charlie and myself returned to Quorn to look at options for replacing the four rotten top door frame noggins. The floor of the recently arrived Lowfit wagon was assessed and will need to be replaced. The majority of the planks were found to be rotten however there were a few that could be salvaged. They are by coincidence big enough to be made into replacement noggins for the box vans. We therefore set about removing the re-usable planks.
Whilst myself and Ross were busy with the planks, Nick, Charlie and Ernie continued the work on the 21″ vacuum cylinder spares. Despite having enough parts for three cylinders, the corrosion damage on two of the cylinder bores means that these will need machining before they can be used again.
Ernie finished off drilling the split pin hole in a new door hinge pin that he had made to replace a missing one on the Lowfit. The new pin was then fitted to the wagon.
Ross and myself selected the best of the four rotten door frame noggins from the vans at Rothley. In the warmth of the Mess coach there was much head scratching and careful measuring up of what was a somewhat incomplete noggin. We were eventually able to complete a drawing that will enable the manufacture of some replacement noggins.
29th Dec – Nick continued with painting up the one usable vacuum cylinder whilst I cleaned up the threads of the dome studs with a die-nut.
Ross and myself took a look at the first of three floor planks from the Lowfit that had been left inside overnight to dry out a bit. Slicing in stages to assess the integrity of the wood in the middle of the plank, we were able to cut good wood of the correct size for one replacement noggin.
The next stage, using our drawing, was to start marking out the positions for the eight mounting holes, which were then drilled.
Thanks for reading, join us again soon for an end of year round-up looking back at what we have achieved over the last 12 months.