A strange but very satisfactory day.  I got there a little late after picking up some machined timber for the window sills but Jim and Ian were hard at work, Jim continuing with the timber beading round the various parts of the bodywork.  This is coming on nicely and starting to look good. Ian continued painting metalwork and then spent the rest of the day rubbing down and repainting staircase stringers.  D end is now complete and he has started on B end which is buried in the garage.  The sum total of the work looks like this.

Jim is shaping some oak beading and Ian looks on.  treasure this photo, he isn't actually on the phone to Crich!

I started off by tidying one of the benches.  To my utter surprise I actually found a bench under the pile of rubbish.  I then thought that on such a nice sunny day I ought to do some work on the running gear.

The first job was to use an angle grinder to take the heads off three heavily corroded coachbolts in the old frames.  This let me punch out the bolts and made way for putting new bolts in to hold the cross rods.  The next job was to put the tie bars on that join the axleboxes.  I have now discovered that, as well as tying the wheelsets together, they have to be strong enough to stop the axles being pushed towards each other when the brakes are applied.

The tie bar can be seen here.

Once these had been 'persuaded' into place with a Birmingham Screwdriver, they were secured to the suspension rods by 5/8" nuts.  Then the cross rods, which stop the frames twisting were installed. 

Here they can be seen. There is only 6mm of clearance between the outer rods and the wheel flanges.

Here the rods can be seen from the end.  The fact that they fitted is a minor miracle as they bend in two planes and the design seriously taxed my grey matter.  However the running gear is now nearly complete.  The only parts still to be designed are the guard irons.

All in all a very satisfactory day even though I wasn't sure what jobs I was going to do when I arrived. Away from the tram the pattern for the brake pawl has been ordered and the bracket that supports the brake column is being profile cut in Batley this week.