Summer 2024 - was there one?
With all the exterior doors removed, "offline" work included rebuilding these doors, all of which were in a very sorry state, having been "vandalised" using steel screws and nails apart from the expected wear and tear of use as a departmental vehicle. The photo below shows what can be recovered from one of the original compartment doors - a lot of scraping, sanding, filling and repairing was required.
After making sure the profile of the replacement vertical frame matched the exiting ones, a notch was cut out of the solebar wood to allow the lower end tenon to swing into place after engaging the top one in the cantrail beam. The new piece of framing was then glued into place and a new teak "fishplate" was inserted to recreate the mortice orifice at the bottom end. Finally, a knee iron was bolted into place to add rigidity.
At the top end of all the vertical door posts, the "T" shaped steel trunnion had been removed in all twelve locations. Goodness knows why? New ones were welded together then primed in green before screwing them into place, an essential strength giver for rigidity when lifting the body.
It took some time to empty out all the stuff (mostly rubbish) which had been dumped in the four passenger compartments. The seat cushions and seat backs were BR Mk1 pattern and would have to be replaced anyway with period look items identical to those in TK 1002. The BR items were very heavy indeed. The seat supports and also the luggage racks had to be removed as well - all part of making the wooden body as light as possible for lifting. Included in these was the the handbrake stantion from the cargo area.
We needed to check that ALL the body securing bolts had been removed before attempting the body lift. Some of these were hiding underneath the compartment lino. Once they were all removed, the wooden body was lifted off the chassis initially using a floor jack and a pinchbar, but once it was high enough a bottle jack was used between the body and the chassis - this method is much faster.
