A very warm and muggy morning in Wharf Yard with rain showers lurking nearby. Allan Black, Charles Benedetto, Andy Sheffield, Pete Thomas and John Olsen began the session by emptying the contents of the floor of the Gunpowder Store, until it started raining! Clearing re-commenced after the rain moved on so that we could move the Corris wagon frame inside, safe from such inundations, to paint it.
With Rain still making a nuisance of itself the cover was left on the Corris wagon body and an early coffee break declared. We shared our table on the platform with David Broadbent and Ann McCanna before returning across the tracks.
To quickly get the second coat of red oxide on the base of the Corris body, Pete and Andy both worked on it, just in case a fresh shower popped up. Allan set up an axlebox cleaning station with a wire brush equipped angle grinder while Charles and John used the blow torch to persuade a stubborn nut to come off the brake lever so the arm could be completely stripped back to metal. The bolt still resisted being removed but a combination of hacksaw, hammer and drift finally removed the offending metal allowing Charles to continue his clean-up of the lever.
John cut a new piece of ply to fix the missing ‘jaw’ of a second ‘Workmate’ that Gerald Gudgings had obtained for us and marked up the holes for drilling out off site as they require a drilled rebate to allow the nuts to be below the wood surface; a job best done with a pillar drill. Andy and Pete moved from red oxide on the Corris wagon body to white primer on the top and outside surfaces of the frame inside the Gunpowder Store, using the patent bottle brush method to prime the many holes drilled through it.
The newly cleaned up Corris wagon metal parts were stored inside wagon no. 146 and all the boxes of bits and tools were returned to safe keeping in the Gunpowder Store, leaving the site safe for visitors.
Photos by John Olsen.