Autumn/Winter 2018
After all of the seat ends were re-varnished, and after all of the window sills and side pieces had been removed, cleaned, re-varnished and put back in place, a start was made with cleaning the seating stock. The seat cushions from 27407 were in better condition than those from 27389, but the backs and sides from 27389 were much better than those from 27407. So it was decided to mix the two sets so that 27389 could be put in some sort of running order until re-upholstery was done.
To complete the toilets, the re-varnished doors were re-hung, then all the door furniture was cleaned up and screwed back in place. Robbie spent quite some time getting the hinged down wash hand basins into a respectable condition. While all this was going on, Don got on with the task of varnishing the east vestibule.
In 27407, Stuart Sellar snr. spent many hours lining up the steam valve actuators to their respective Bowden cables. The broken main light on the north side was replaced by Jim Pairman. Not much else was done in 27407 as the major effort was put on to 27389 to try to complete it first.
27389 is beginning to look like a carriage again!
The insides of the exterior doors were re-varnished, then attention turned to the next big problem. Luggage racks.
There were enough racks and bits of racks to do one carriage, but definitely not both so Robbie set about making up patterns for
the required extra parts. Unfortunately, the racks have a left hand end, a right hand end, and, in the case of the side wall racks,
a centre bracket. All are different.
Another problem was the luggage rack netting which was extremely tired. We used to get netting from various fishing related
places, but these sources all seem to have disappeared. After many emails and phone calls, a supplier was found in the Derby area.
