This sequence of pictures was again taken by Jim Ormiston in November / December 2002. I had decided to make new end mouldings which form the continuation of the cant rail round the end of the coach to meet the gangways. That was before Alastair MacLeod saw the filthy, broken, glued together mouldings which had been taken off and kept as patterns for new ones. Out came his scraper and ten minutes later all this georgeous teak was in view. So he has now volunteered to restore the originals. This view shows one partially cleaned and two untouched mouldings. I must admit they would have been really difficult to make as they curve in two directions - would have used up a lot of teak!
The corridor door had fallen to bits. First we thought "Let's use another complete door" from
another coach, but nothing even remotely fitted the coach profile. So Alastair set about restoring the original.
The views
below show the door in its "start" condition. The view on the right is of Alastair with his ubiquitous scraper at
work on the top part of the door.
Not only was the door damaged, but the coach framing post which held the door hinges was broken out in the area of the top hinge. The wood was most likely damaged because the screws holding the top hinge were extremely close to the outer surface of the frame. After cutting out the damaged wood, a new piece of teak (slightly too large) was "glued and screwed" in place using the wondrous PolyUrethane glue which foams up and fills any voids as it sets. Terrific stuff! The new piece of timber was then planed down to the original framing profile and holes drilled (picture) to take the top hinge.
