A busy day at the depot this Sunday, the Wickham recieved an FP exam ahead of our month of intense running, little of note was found. The new seat cushions for 50528 have been stored away in the guards van of 51618 until the seat frames arrive powder coated to fit them into.
The cab roof on 51618 has been lifted off of the body for the first time in decades. The purpose of this was to assess what remained of the cantrails; these run from top front corners along the top of the body. The extent of the corrosion and rot is obvious in the photos, and explains why the cab has had a habit of being rather wet over the years.
The awful Welsh weather at the weekend lead to our team seeking refuge within the 105, that's not to say no work was done, far from it in fact. One pair of our team set into painting various parts of the wooden kit that will eventually become the interior of the vehicle. The original product can be seen below.
Another member of the team set into cleaning the aluminium quarter lights at the top of the windows. While another member worked on measurements for even more wooden parts for the interior.
Once the weather eased off some work was carried out on one of the VJX vans, involving sealing around the new wooden panelling.
A new arrival at Pentrefelin depot has been two Class 104 bogies. Although these are in good condition they have been in outside store for 20 years and will need a fair bit of work to bring them into a useable state.
Plans to lift them onto our isolated storage track came to nothing on Sunday when the crane operator was called away to drive the steam train so instead we contented ourselves with removing the old prop shafts.
Sunday also saw a bit of work done to one of the throttle motors of the Class 104, which was found to be slow in running back during a Driver Experience on Saturday. One of the pistons was removed, cleaned and fitted with a new seal. A sticking door on 50454 also received a bit of attention.
At Butterley some time was spent cleaning out the guard's van of Gloucester 51118 now that all the new flooring is in place. Bags of rust and old material were removed before a final vacuum up and the commencement of painting it out.
The 141 has failed with a problem selecting direction. Time spent on this revealed that one of the EP valves which seems to have a severe leak is not working properly, other than manually. Unfortunately we have no spares so the issue remains unsolved for the moment.
The weekend at Pentrefelin depot has mostly been spent tidying up and getting ready for the forthcoming weeks. The Wickham worked a second train timetable on Saturday so on Sunday we had to swap the units round so that they were in the right order for next weekend's driver experience. This proved rather more difficult than usual due to the yard being full up with carriages meaning that a shunt was not possible. With only one driver on hand both the 104 and the Wickham had to be worked down to Goods Junction in multiple so that they could be swapped round on the sidings there.
We have been doing some more depot work and this time the subject of our attention was the mark 2 coach 5809 that we use as a mess van. The back of this never sees any sun and so it gets covered in green slime from time to time. This was all steam cleaned off and some time was also spent throwing rubbish and discarded materials in the skip to make the place tidier.
Over at Butterley the 141 completed its four-week stint working mid-week 'Seaside Specials'. Although it had completed 15 days running in the last month without issues it actually developed a reversing fault on its way back to the sidings at the end of the final day! The cause of this has still to be investigated.
Off-site we have contractors working on fabricating all the steelwork that we'll need for the repair of the Class 127 power car 51618 and also working on retrimming the seats for Class 108 54490 and Class 104 50528.