Autumn 2025
With BR shifting the west pair of cargo doors lengthwise and converting them to sliding doors we were required to make 4 new cargo doors as two handed pairs. Fortunately we had the existing pairs of doors, 5&6 and 13&14 as templates. Making the framing up was the trickiest part. The long verticals were made first, then the cross members at the top, below the top window, at waist level and at the bottom were made and trial fitted using mortice and tenon jointing. The photo below shows the quite complex routering required for the upper part of the vertical frames.
Thanks to the extremely cooperative steam department, the one of the west end buffers was welded up to replace the shaft and channel wastage, then a new location slot was milled into the underside of the buffer shaft. The south side buffer has a bent shaft and will require more serious attention. This was temporarily refitted to the carriage in late October to ease the shocks to the lifted body during the upcoming major museum shunt.
The cargo area interior is planked horizontally using thicker boards up to waist level then
thinner boards up to the top lights. Due to the shifting of the cargo doors, some of this boarding was missing,
and some of it was damaged, especially at the west end. Recoverable boarding was scraped of paint and new boarding
was manufactured to fill in some of the missing parts. The cargo doors interior planking should line up with the
fixed planking between the door openings. We are trying to achieve this!
Between the bottom board and the floor there was a small gap. This was filled in by making and fitting thicker hardwood
between the frame verticals as a sort of skirting board support. This will double as a securing point for the vertical
tongue and groove board at the west end.
Various other jobs have got in the way of replumbing the steam heating and vacuum braking system, but
while the body is still lifted clear of the chassis, the rubber cushions which support the body have been fixed in place.
New threshold plates were required for the re-positioned west cargo doors. These are in two parts - the thick hardwearing
plate which sits on the floor and a thinner aluminium strip which is fitted outside the thick one to protect the wooden
solebar from the weather, specifically, rain running down the doors then underneath the doors.
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All four of the buffer saddle wooden "parking" supports had rotted or were missing. David made a new set and the photos above show the horrendous shape of these things then one of these trial fitted into position prior to painting.