As well as having to replace 5 chair seat bases, 5 backs had to
be made. These are much more complex than the bases. Two vertical trapezoidal pieces are fitted to two
curved struts to form the basic frame. Don & Chris made a jig so that 4 thicknesses of thin ply could be
glues together to make the horizontal curved pieces. hole were drilled in the back of the jig so that the
finished struts could be easily knocked out of the jig using a punch. One such strut is shown in the photo
to the right in the jig during the glue setting time.
After removal from the jig, the curved struts were stored as in the photo on the left. A brake block was placed
on the struts to make VERY sure that there was no tendency to revert to straight as the glue finally cured.
A further jig was made up to assemble the backs which were glued and screwed together. After setting, Chris
cut out plywood sheet backs to complete the assembly. Between cutting out the backs and assembling, the plywood sheet was
held in a curve with several brake blocks on top to try to force it into a curve prior to final assembly. This
seemed to work OK as Chris had no problems with the final fixing to the frames which were then tidied up and sent off
to the upholsterers.
The west saloon door has been fitted with black draught proofing felt as is shown in this photo. The felt
was glued to a narrow strip of thin formica to give a nice smooth finish. The formica was then drilled an pinned
using glimp pins to the edge of the door as you can see. The east saloon will be similarly dressed when access
to that end of the coach is clear of the decorators.
Not much more happened visually to 644 during the autumn of 2008. But quite a bit of work was done.
Several more coats of varnish were applied to the exterior panels - this photo shows Reg Parsons hard at work in
September on the SW corner of the vehicle. More lining out was done on the north side and Dave Simpson spent a lot of
time tarting up the kitchen door, a glimpse of which can just be seen behind Reg in this photo.
A very kind gentleman called Mike Trice has sent life-size prints of the lettering required for the exterior which
he created in 1991 while on a reaearch project at the NYMR while 641 was being restored. These will allow Dave Simpson
to trace "BUFFET CAR" and "LNER" much more easily on to the long horizontal panels of the coach.