Winter 2020 - Mouldings
As Covid lockdown has again restricted our efforts, the concentration of work during late November and December has been upon the production of the mouldings required to complete the corridor side. The process of manufacturing these is lengthy – it takes about an hour to make one item. It is a matter of considerable regret to the team that those who undertook the previous ‘restoration’ of the vehicle considered it necessary to dispose of the mouldings which had been fitted when the carriage was repaired in 1972. This meant that we had no patterns to work from – all the mouldings from the compartment side had been similarly destroyed and were not available.
The process of manufacturing the mouldings is worth summarising. The first stage was to make up a cardboard template from the drawings which we have, courtesy of the GSWRA. The cardboard templates were necessary to get the radiuses correct, as these cannot be altered later if they are wrong. These were then offered up to the carriage to check that they actually fitted, and they were adjusted where necessary. From the cardboard, a second set of templates was made up in 3/8 inch fibre board – a nasty substance to work with. Again, these were offered up to the carriage, checked for fit and adjusted if necessary. And quite a lot of adjustment was necessary.
When the board templates were confirmed, the production of the final mouldings was commenced. This involved
taking home offcuts of marine plywood - the same wood used in the panelling of the corridor side. As well as being very heavy,
marine plywood is also very dense and hard, and can be machined like solid wood. The templates were placed on this plywood, the
shapes marked up and then cut out using a jig saw in one member’s workshop. When the shapes were cut out, they were then edged
with a router to get the bevel correct. Finally, they were trial fitted on to the carriage to check for compliance.
In this way, we are in a position now to manufacture many of the mouldings needed for the compartment side too.
Then came Covid-19 lockdown Number Three: RATS!!!!
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