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.