Sauna house life

ive been in St anton for nearly 2 months now...........

and i love it
living in the wooden shack that we do rocks i mean check out this picture of it!













its a shame about the snow though its a really slow winter weve had maybe 2 or 3 powder days

but weve made the most of them. Even on a transfer day where were not allowed to ride we made a little kicker on the hill down from the sauna house and were hitting it.

I got a sweet picture of old haz ( one of the roomies ) getting a sick nose grab off of it.

 I managed to get out here christmas eve and so had a great christmas day helping out in the 24 man chalet Garry had made a great christmas dinner, including an amazing sausage and herb stuffing that went down a storm and we just beasted out dinner service then headed into town for a few brewskis.


 The big night in St Anton though is new years eve and we hit it hard as we had the next day off.

Its mental with everyone partying in the tiny main street letting off fireworks all around you from the middle of the crowd. We carried the party on back here and poor Kiera passed out pretty early and the first game of rodeo of the year happened.

The picture doesnt do it justice as 5 minutes after this she had ski's snowboards fire extinguishers on her too.

A couple of weeks ago we had a vally rally which basically involves getting dressed up in some fancy dress and then going round the mountain in teams doing challenges and having drinks along the way. As i lacked fancy dress i was handed a fantastic team russia one piece to wear and i wore it with some real style as you can see here.





with the past few powder days we have been hiring the proper avi gear and going hiking and making the most of it. But a day after a huge pow day ange and i had a chilled out ski round just enjoying being on the mountain in the sun


right ive got to go to spar now to go get some minced meat for tonights dinner a tasty lasagne for my american guests. 5 17 year old lads who just want a couple of courses a night of filling tasty food.

U turns or us

Ive had a pretty big u turn since september

I was really not enjoying uni and had no motivation to finish so with the help of the rents i suspended the year ( gives me the option to go back and finish 3rd year in september ) and moved to the alps

I got a job at super short notice as in interview one monday got the job friday and a week later hey your off to france for the winter

it all happened really fast but there i was heading out for training in Val D'Isere and then to work in Tignes as a kitchen / night porter

Val D was a great place to train in and we had a solid couple of nights out as well as a couple of hungover days training. The whole Val D crew were wicked to hang out with unluckily though we didnt have lift passes so couldnt ride. It was like the worlds cruellest strip tease....

And then before you knew it we were heading out to Tignes to move into our ski lodge the lodge was really nice except for the staff accomodation.

It was literally a shoebox with 3 hairy smelly blokes squeezed in. There was no heating ventillation and to get any sun from the 2 tiny windows we were having to go and clear snow it was pretty gross.

Working in the kitchen there when you were on days was a laugh having good banter with the lads and lasses was great and you just got on with it finished rode and worked again.

Nights on the other hand was a wierd experience the only highlights being drunken colleagues climbing in through the kitchen windows to find something to eat.

7 nights on the bounce though really sucked and I wasnt super happy there

luckily Ange's bosses in St Anton needed a chalet host for a 6 person chalet so christmas eve 2013 I finished work and hopped a bus over to Geneva then trains on to St Anton

Ive been here a couple of days now and love it

Only issue is im waiting for a lift pass again bugger

3rd year : life gets serious

Its my 3rd year at uni

How the heck did i end up here? Its only 5 minutes ago i started first year at Plymouth

since my last blog ive been boarding a few times Ive held down a desk job all summer ( ive never felt like someones stolen an entire summer before )
Ive moved into a new place and currently have a Norweigan room mate asleep on my bed.....
How do you get a Norweigan off of a bed

Ive also now got windows 8 and a new laptop wohooo but windows 8 is really confussing me it seems to have a mind of its own ......

I also had a wicked few days in scotland this summer with Inga we partied up at the Braemar Highland games and it was such a good weekend. The weather held for the most part and the colours and sounds of the game were fantastic. The highlight has got to be the mass pipeband , imagine over a 140 men women old and young playing pipes, banging the drums and marching around in all their finest tartan and shining silver wear.

The funniest bit has gotta be this lad in the picture with me.



He had been piping all day and was getting paid to play outside one of the nicest restaurants in town. We were having a bite to eat and a beer in the place opposite when his drunken pipe master starts shouting 'ehhhhhh Jimmmy lad yourr drooonnneeesss shitttt!' so this lad goes about messing with his drones whilst the old pipe master is pissing himself carrying on the abuse.

Then the old guys turns to us and says ' ohh he's a fair wee piper shamee his pipes are foooked '

 so despite having my summer stolen from me I still some real fun. Even wheeling Jonesy through Tesco's after he'd broken his ankle whilst he chatted up every female member of staff.....

Third year started like 3 days ago and since its been hectic with a whole bunch of coursework im working on and a dissertation to write.

Its kinda overwhelming already haha I just wanted another relaxed year throwing mad shapes in the clubs and chilling out with all the peeps.

But no University of Plymouth has other ideas for my spare, or what used to be spare, time so Im off to go research for an essay on '3 clauses you would add in to the New Engineering Contract which also comply with enviromental legislation' fun fun fun

2012 - 2013

wow its been ages since i blogged anything

i guess dani ditz got me back into doing it her page is so sweet

(check it out at likeridingabicycle.com)

so 2012 was a pretty hectic year i turned 22 didnt get any more mature

learned to wake board, fixed stuff in north wales, partied just as hard as before, got some snowboarding in with uni again ! great trip

swam in a lake river sea or just anywhere every week this summer from cornwall to wiltshire to up north just everywhere . was a real good feeling

what else happened
well i got a girl lost a girl then got a new one hahah just how it goes eh

jonesy picked me up a hammock and my god that thing is my saving grace sometimes ; just go and swing in it for a while when things get mental 

 This was from a trip up to scotland for a friends 21st : we took a minibus up with 6 of us and had a mental 3 days up there, id never been before but just loved it. And i even got an invitation back wicked-wackady-sha!

the fiesta died , on route to gramps house with erica in too so after pushing it off a roundabout we ended up getting pocco the polo. Who broke down new years eve on the way to woolacombe ( unimpressed ) managed to fix her though and its been running round since with that cable tie holding the accelerator cable together haha

On the subject of cars i got clipped by a taxi for the first time but it resulted in the 3rd ankle / knee injury ( to the same dang side ) of the year im sure the hospital records thing im a mong hah

 Just chilling with the guys in plym: we headed down the hoe one eve to check out the light and it was fricking grand- i love plymouth ghetto by the sea even though it rains hard as nails most of the year



We had some good family news with lil stan being born but sad news in that great nan died. It was a real nice funeral and ma did the whole family proud with her reading just about nana's values virtues and how she wouldnt want us sad and how even to the last she was an independent woman passing on in her own bed in peace.

North wales river crossing ; what do you think of course i had to do it forwards backwards all ways hahah

Right 2013 is going to be a fun year hopefully gin will be over this summer and for the first time in a while im going to try to earn some yen this summer ( snowboardings a fricking expensive hobby same as wake boarding)

Uni

Its been a while

Im at uni now down in Plymouth and im really enjoying sat in the library right now and can see the sun so im going to go find these books im after and then bussle on out

and last night me and the guys won a hundred quid on the bonus question in a pub quiz

first time ive won something in a pub other than the meat raffle in spooners ( miss that raffle )

the scary thing is im doing alright at this uni lark even helping other people out with work ...

getting good results in maths ( Liz Jones its all for you ) and the other more physics / maths based stuff

my report writing still leaves something to be desired though ....

anywho peace

wagons wagons wagons

To the left members of the big wagon weekend with the Gwr wagon and the Lnwr wagon

wagons wagons wagons

so its the end of the summer
just the last week to go
and we will have got another 7 wagons into back into the train
tomorrow we will get the old lead wagon 256 back on some good wheels
then its just a case of putting the freshly turned wheels that have been welded up by will high and his mate paul
under the other 4 wagons of the these there is a gwr with brake gear attached just a cheeky lil bit to finish on that
we need to bend the brake gear hanger as on one side the brake block doesnt sit fully against the wheel
this one is painted in black with grey uprights and looks very nice
one of the jobs on the welded wheels was to redrill centres in the journal so that the wheels will spin centrally on the wheel lathe this was another of the jobs done over our big wagon weekend over august bank holiday

also done is an lnwr wagon with the sexy brass axle box cover although we are awaiting on a few parts such as brake blocks before we can refit all the brake gear
we are going to let this run untill the next wagon bashing weekend though as it looks fantastic in the black paint with the middle side rail in white

Here is a picture of the lnwr wagon pre white rail with a set of 'ambulance' wheels under it

going through the painting and finishing shop at the moment are another lnwr wagon ( unbraked though ) and an fr wagon shown to the left on the works van

They just came back from shot blasting and they had a basic red oxide primer layer sprayed on on these two we need to paint another coat of black paint on and then change the wheels on the fr one we also need to make a pair of coupling pins for it.
As the old ones were wasted to nothing.

A couple of weekends ago we had a big wagon bashing party with different jobs going on all over the workshops there was wheel welding , hot riveting painting and various finishing jobs


We were riveting in 4 road we had around 50 or 60 rivets to do and we got them all done on the saturday we actually ran out of the rivets we had ordered in specially at the start of the summer. It was hot sweaty loud work but with 4 of us working on it led by Tim Elsby and having the current works apprentices we got into a good rhythm and ended up bashing through the lot quite quickly. We all had our separate jobs with Huw heating up the rivets and carrying them across, Rhys getting a block and bar on the end of the rivet with a head on it to lever it against the air riveter. Tim and myself switching between helping Rhys and doing the riveting over of the heads. We riveted in new corners on 2 different wagons with one wagon needing all four internal corners replaced.
This is a pretty standard repair this summer a new rail spine ( essentially find a knackered piece of rail and cut it to the right length ) with new corner plates to hold the spine in to the left you can see part of the corner piece which we have riveted in.

half century

so this is my 50th blog
seems pretty apt that im back where it started at the world famous festiniog railway

so lets do the apres canada bit quick
got home
2 days later got a job
moved plants , planted plants, watered plants, got a little bit sunburnt for 6 weeks at a local garden centre which was rather good fun
caught up with alll the important people that i hadnt seen in forever
destroyed a certain butler at mah jong

then i jumped in the fiesta and headed on up here
with a couple of brake problems on route

to start with i was just firing a whole bunch as we were short of crews
and i had some great days ( full main valve from ddualt ) and some terrible ( ray ive run out of coal.......... ) in the rain

for the past 5 weeks though ive mainly been fixing the old slate waggons
its a heritage society funded
The first 'fix' we did ( myself and tim ) was to 857 and it needed some spine repairs so we knocked up a couple of fish plates and then had the joy of having to gas axe a hole in the old spine for the new bolts to go in as we lacked a mag drill that fitted in the gap
so a bit of swearing later ( and a bit of die grinding to ummmmm make the holes a little rounder )
we had a nice little fix
although me and a coupling did have a disagreement ( well i just put it on upside down .... doh )

the next day we fixed a couple of faults from the book one of them being some of the brass spacers in one of the couplings on a 3 tonne wagon was absolutely shot to bits luckily tim found a couple of spares in our racking in the hlf shed so after cleaning up the buffer we fitted them and roberts your fathers brother we had got 2 done in a weekend

the next wagon to be fixed was another gwr wagon which needed a similar repair to 857 and me and bruno knocked that one off pretty quickly

the wagon after the gwr one was a lnwr wagon with an interesting lms axle box ( complete with brass cover phhwwwooooarrrhhh ) this one was a little more complex as it needed an entire new spine and frame stretchers
as the original spine was made of rail we decided to make the new one out of rail
so off me and emma went to go steal an old piece of double head rail
it cut in the band saw nice and easy but that was the end of the easy bit
due to the lip which the floor sits on we had to cut a corresponding bit out of the rail and which took a while due to all the rust and just the thickness of the material
then we made new plates to hold the spine in to the old substructure and we had to make new keep plates to go over these
emma was fantastic with her doing all the welding
we had various cleaners / younger volunteers helping us out on these wagons teaching them the first steps needed to keep the fleet running

in this time those last 2 wagons have gone for shot blasting
weve run a gravity train
got nearly 4 more wagons ready for shot blasting but ive got to go as ive got some wagons to fix