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Beds, Locks , Yellow Paint and Silence
According to the tin, the paint isn’t yellow, it’s cream. But in the early evening gloom last Wednesday, lit by the glow of a couple of electric lights, the newly painted walls in the support coach looked more yellow than cream which is probably a good thing because you want the walls in the support coach to be a welcoming, warming colour to offset the usual colour scheme on a loco shed (grey: coal dust, smoke, soot & concrete). The walls of the kitchen/workshop area were painted early on in the support coach conversion, but over the intervening time they have become rather work-worn as the area has been extensively used as a workshop for the rest of the coach, so a final coat of fresh paint was called for to tidy the area up ready for habitation. Obviously the new tin of cream paint is yellower than the one which was used a couple of years ago, but it still says Cream on the tin.
I noticed the new coat of paint when I went into the coach carrying some bed frames that Dave Wright had put together. Malcolm and Steve were already hard at work, but I had a chance for a quick look at the workshop area, and while I was there, Steve showed me the newly-overhauled door locks ready to be fitted.
Wednesday was Remembrance Day; appropriately, the Army were at the GCR training Diesel drivers using D123 “Leicestershire & Derbyshire Yeomanry”. At 11am, I saw the squad standing at attention near the water column. The shed was silent too: the radio was turned off and all the volunteers stood down for an informal 2 minutes silence.
Apart from those two minutes, work continues on 5305 LA’s projects (and the other jobs on shed): the gas box has been cut down and re-painted, the axlebox is receiving new white metal ready for machining (Thanks Harry!) and a host of other small jobs carry on in the background.