A new steam engine at the Museum!

A new steam engine at the Museum! Now that was something I had not been expecting. However, the reality of the news was a little different to my imagined scene especially as I went into the cafe to be greeted by this smiling face!

Yes, Thomas the Tank Engine has now become part of the Museum!

A very kind donation to the Museum, he is, at the moment, ironically, our only working steam loco! Feed a £1 coin into the slot in the cab and he will take you off on a ride to nowhere whilst playing the Thomas theme which should delight the cafe volunteers after the tenth time they hear that in an hour!

Walking out of the cafe to the restoration shed I was also shocked to see that things had been moved!

Steam loco Barrington has now been moved into the shed for a cosmetic repaint. Elizabeth, the next in line, is still much as she was five years ago.  After that, 1931 is still being worked on for its boiler retube.  The Southern brake van is more or less where it was before the move and Ketton No.1 is now at the back of the line or is that the front of the shed? Anyway, it is at the opposite end to where it was last week!

Things are certainly, well, tight in the shed with just enough room at each end to get round. It was noted by one volunteer that every time that you needed to get to the other side of a piece of rolling stock you had to walk round the whole shed rather than cut through between the items which was the case before they all became buffered up. My suggestion for a limbo dancing competition under the buffers did not go down well! Note to self, keep quiet in the future!

With little room left in the shed I found a group of volunteers trying to make sense of the gantry crane that was erected last week for the impending lift of the tank from 1931. Either that, or they were trying to work out how to string me up after the limbo dancing idea!

At this point I thought I had better retreat to the safety of grass cutting duties but the mower had othr ideas as it continues to taunt me! This time the linkage to the airflap in the carburetor  decided to come undone! It took a while to figure out what the issue was but a quick fix once discovered. The mower however got little use as I took action on some overhanging vegetation near the entrance with my usual vegetational butchery!

That should make it easier for any double decker buses to get in like the one at the Bank Holiday event!