Museum working party 26th May 2022

The weather was 50:50 this morning as Andy Sheffield, Max Birchenough , Charles Benedetto and John Olsen assembled for the mornings activities. In the absence of wagon no. 146, which was still sitting in the siding at Brynglas following Don Newing’s ashes interment last Saturday, the team tackled three other wagons.

Andy got the job of finding all the bits of the FR slate wagon that had not been painted with black bitumastic paint last week, Charles and Max used wire brushes in the angle grinders to clean the light rust off the already stripped floor of wagon no. 117, the incline wagon, prior to priming with acid etch primer and John baled out wagon no. 213, the splayside, before drilling two drain holes in the floor.

By coffee time Andy was satisfied he had found all the last specks of sand coloured primer and covered them, Max and Charles had cleaned off the exposed metal of the incline wagon and given it a thorough clean with brushes and then white spirit and John had bored the drainage holes, wire brush cleaned the floor area immediately around them in the splayside wagon. Both wagons were covered over in case the low clouds decided to rain on Tywyn.

The appearance of Mike Green at Wharf heralded coffee time, which was taken in his company in the cafe, as it was blowing quite hard outside.

Post coffee the rain had stayed away and Andy had to retire for a previous engagement. John applied primer to the new drain holes in the splayside wagon and then handed the brushes on to Charles and Max to apply to the incline wagon. Casting a critical eye over the FR wagon John spotted more than one area of sandy speckles and applied more bitumastic paint to the frame, especially the hard to see and reach places on the underside. The incline wagon was covered over to allow the primer to fully cure in the dry and the worksite tidied.

Photos by John Olsen.