More experience and wisdom at Rocks By Rail!

Thursday. Not my normal day at the Museum but because of works at WMD HQ at the start of the week it was necessary to move my day to today - Thursday! A busy day too with dealing with some donations, grass cutting and putting out some banners on the surrounding road network for the next event a week on Sunday and delivering some leaflets to a caravan site! All in a days work at the Museum. However I did take time to visit the restoration shed where there was a lot of activity going on.

Firstly Thomas and Alex are doing some welding work on the body work of Ketton No1 locomotive. A long-term project, which is another way of saying its been undergoing restoration for some time now, it is good to see it moving on.

Would you believe the loco is being painted Racing Green! With a top speed of about 15mph it should be Slow Green!

Some neat welding there.

The guys have also been busy preparing the cab roof for paint having ground the old paint off.

Now for the experience and wisdom part of this post! John, who I think won't mind me saying he has a wealth of experience and wisdom, always has a way with things that just makes you think yes, why would I not have done that. Well you would not because you didn't have the wealth of experience and wisdom that John has. However, as always, I look and learn! Take today for example. John is bolting the painted running boards to the Shark brake van. He is using coach bolts which had that shiny chrome look to them when I saw the ones nearest to me.

These are the black headed ones - neat!

He must paint each one with a brush after putting them in place - that is a slow and painful job!

The reality is that he dips the head into a tin of black paint.

Then places the bolts in place.

Then just a gentle tap with a hammer and the bolt goes in and the still wet paint resettles around where the hammer hit. That's experience and wisdom!