The strong gusty East wind was raising the dust in Wharf Yard this morning as the working party team Allan Black, Charles Benedetto, Andy Sheffield, Pete Thomas and John Olsen joined forces with Keith Theobald to lift the metal body off the Corris Mail Waggon and then, safely, flip it over.
The lifting off was comparatively easy with Keith in the Bobcat and John as Banksman, but the turning over taxed the talents of everyone and there was much discussion before a plan emerged thanks to Andy’s expertise as a ‘Slinger’ during his working life. Essentially by using a pair of strops the body was turned first through 90o, the strops reset and the body then turned the second 90o and deposited on the ground before being moved to a working location atop wooden battens.
The arrival of Ann McCanna, Mike Green and Max Birchenough coincided with the successful completion of the operation and we retired to the cafe for our morning brew and chat. This morning Ann had brought in a tub of chocolate brownies to keep our chocolate levels up, which we gratefully ate, thank you Ann.
With the sun breaking through the early clouds we returned to our ongoing jobs, Andy assembling a second under stair barrier, Allan and Charles attacking the rust on the FR (actually an ex GWR wagon) metal slate wagon basket and Pete removing the drawhooks from the Corris wagon frame.
John went upstairs in the museum to re-secure the stand holding the Rev. Awdry biography folder to the wall of the Awdry Study before rejoining the main working party. Liz Porrett came over to discuss formalising training in the safe use of our power tools and to help get the railway electrical department to PAT test the museum power toolset as they were overdue an inspection before we wrapped up for the morning.
Photos by Allan Black and John Olsen