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Not to sleep, nor perchance to dream; but, in Dave Wright’s case, to weld seemingly endless numbers of mitre-cut lengths of steel into bed bases and then fit them into the compartments in the support coach. Thanks Dave
Other mitre cutting work underway for 5305LA is the chamfering of the ends of the super-heater element parts ready for Malcolm-the-Welder to do his bit later this month. We are very grateful to Alex Pakes for her promise of further efforts tomorrow, and also to Jim Grey who set the job up and showed Pete Hackney what was required and Dick Bellamy who made a start on them on Thursday. Funnily enough this list is startlingly reminiscent of the list of people who have spent large portions of the last couple of weeks fettling up and chamfering the return bends for the elements. Thanks to everyone who has been involved in this (and other 5305la projects) and apologies if I have missed naming you – it’s not intentional!
The Five received extra attention last weekend, with visits by Gerry Garside and John Rule who turned their attention to the cleaning and painting of the bogie while John Street was busy with various other tasks including fettling superheater element bits and some tasks on the rest of the Five.
The Five is still up on jacks in the shed while the team sort out and check the axleboxes and various parts of the motion and clean and paint the frames. I have often noticed that it’s easier to clean the frames without the wheels in the way, but on balance I think the effort of stripping the motion down to do the lift negates the benefit so we will continue to clean the frames through the wheels most of the time.