Sunday 2 November 2014

Feedback from NYMR, and bootscrapers

Feedback from NYMR via Brian:
"I have spoken with the NYMR most days this week to arrange the return dates in November. This has been confirmed as 5th Nov loaded onto the lorries at the NYMR to be returned to GWSR on the 5/6 November.

The loco has run every day without major issues since 20/10/2014.

A couple of little maintenance issues:

-    The handle for the smoke box became detached, broken weld - This has been welded by the fitters and is reported as all OK

-    A lubrication line became detached. this has been fixed and all others check with no issues.

I have spoken with the NYMR team at various time since the 20th and with Clive Goult today. They are very pleased with the loco and threatening to keep it and send the a blue A4 in replacement and hope we don't notice!"

And re the Mid Hants Railway: " asked about 2807 going to them in the near future may be this time next year for the Autumn Gala. They had seen the you tube footage of 2807 and some of their team had seen her perform at the NYMR too. And the Nunney team helped by saying that 2807 was a very very impressive loco!!"


Meanwhile

Monday 27th
An hour's boot scraper painting.  Almost got caught out by the clock change - it gets dark early, and I've no lights on my bike!  I could hear the Manor whistling in the distance - presumably a charter?

Wednesday 29th
Miserable weather, so Bruce & I continued with the painting.  When I arrived home, there was a message to say that the café on Winchcombe station had just sold their last boot scraper!

Thursday 30th
The F&W had sold five by this morning, so a bit of frantic assembling of boot scrapers was necessary, and re-stocking the two cafés.

Saturday 1st November
Bruce arrived early and painted a top coat on the rail chairs in the production line.  I boxed up two completed boot scrapers, and the two of us tackled a Stock-Take of our sales items.  As we have no one who is willing to run our sales stall, we are closing down the CSPL Sales operation, and I hope that we can persuade the GWSR shop to take some items off of our hands.  I think it will take them a while to sell the 500 2807 postcards that we seem to have!  We gave up counting pens (they appeared from several places) and just estimated there to be >80.  All of the bears had gone AWOL.  We couldn't find them anywhere!  Gilbert thinks that they are hiding in cardboard boxes, so I'm off on the hunt tomorrow.

Steve turned up after his FLA meeting and assisted with the stock-take.  Richard (FLA) popped in to pick up the pile of coins that staff at the Coffee Pot café had saved for us during the year.  There were 775 coins (I ought to set a quiz: how much do you think they added up to?).

As far as we know, 2807 operated successfully today at NYMR, and is scheduled to be in service on Sunday - the last day of their season.

2807 is expected to be back here on Thursday; and Saturday we shall be concentrating on fixing things that we don't know about yet!  She's down to do race trains a week later, so there may well be minor issues to clear up over the forthcoming weekend.  See you then?



Roger



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