Back to the cold UK but not too cold today.   I picked up various pieces of steelwork from Fidaport and Ian spent the day putting primer on them and then spent the rest of the day staining seat latts.  These are now looking good with the alternate colours.  Paul arrived and spent the morning making the template for the D end canopy bend canvas strips.  Jim put the straps onto the A side rocker panel and I spent the day working on the floor latts.  Due to my lack of forethought these had been installed and painted before we put the bolts in for the sway bar bracket.  They looked good.

I realised that we needed to take two of them up, then locate the pre drilled holes in the cross members and install the bolts before putting the latts back with cutouts over the heads of the coach bolts. This took most of the day.  Three of the holes were located easily but one was difficult. A floor nail was right in the way so on Paul's advice I chopped out a small section of floor board and eventually extracted the nail and found the hole in the cross member.

A somewhat battered floor nail.

Once that was out of the way the sway bar bracket, now primed, was put in place upside down to test the alignment of the bolts.

Miracles of miracles it fitted.  Nearest the camera you can see where the floor board piece had been taken out.  This hole was then filled with a plug of floorboard offcut, with a pre drilled hole in it.  All 4 bolts were then fitted and before we left we got the first of the latts screwed back down again. We also managed to get some marking out done for the positions of the seat frames.  All in all a good day.

Well I may have been sunning myself in Tenerife, and riding the new tramway in Santa Cruz, but work has not stopped.   Before I left I got all the steelwork for the rest of the brake gear ordered and also discovered that Fidaport had a machine for bending flat bar so ordered the top rails for the dash as well as the plates for the dashes at both ends.  Hopefully these will all be ready for me when I go down early next week.  It was nice to see the sway bar and brake rods coming together.   Jim, Ian and Paul had a busy day on the first Wednesday I was away and got all the floor latts in the saloon fitted as well as various other smal jobs.  I kept getting texts while I was lying by the pool on a sunbed asking what job could be done next.   The team were considerably colder than I was.  This week Ian and Jim painted the saloon floor so there is some real progress.  Hopefully I will be able to post some photos next Wednesday.

This time it was a truly cold Wednesday but three of us, Paul, Jim and myself, turned up and we had a day of measuring and preparation.  The first job was to estimate, using photographs and a plumbline, where the dash finishes so that we can get the sheet metal rolled to the correct size. Our fabricators,  Fidaport of Batley, are closing as they are retiring.  Fortunately most of the fabrication work is done or already in progress so the most difficult job is rolling the sheets for the dash to the correct profile.  After a bit of conferring and studying photos that I had played with and enlarged in Photoshop we came to a consensus and the sheets will now be rolled before Fidaport closes. We then started on the floor latts and worked out methods of production for the ones in the saloon.  I also spent an hour up on the roof sorting some of the upstairs ones out.  By luncthime the 19 saloon latts were cut to length and then in the afternoon Jim and I spent time marking them then drilling and countersinking them ready for fixing next week.

I also screwed one expermental one down on the roof.

We decided that the screws need to be nearer the ends to keep the curve correct.  All in all a good day with a lot of designing done.  The other thing we found out was that the latts will conform to the curve of the roof without being steam bent which will save us a lot of trouble.  I now need to do some more work on the drawing for the upper deck before marking out can be completed.

Another surprisingly warm and sunny Wednesday (for January).  Jim and I spent the morning tidying up the interior of the tram and sweeping it out.  I then used the router to put a slot into the front seat bearers to retain the seat bases.  This filled the tram with sawdust again and then Jim created even more chopping the last few inches at each end out with a chisel.  Some pre machined strips of oak were then glued into place and the seat nosings will engage with these to lock the seats in position.  Michael came again and spent the day drilling various brake components so in the afternoon we bolted a brake beam and two brake blocks together and trial fitted it onto the running gear.  This looked good and the brake blocks are now hanging by their proper cotter pins. Paul arrived in the afternoon and spent some time fitting new mouldings that he has made to retain the door glass. The doors had been machined originally with the glazing beads as part of the door before the door was assembled. We had to cut the old beads out to fit the new glass, so Paul has machined some mouldings of the correct pattern that should look OK when they are varnished.  In between other jobs I managed to fit the iron straps on the C side rocker panel.  Once the mastic has been cleaned up this will be ready for undercoating.

Every week it looks a little more like a complete tram.

Another very mild Wednesday but after three days of hard frost. When we opened the shed up the whole tram was wet with condensation and the windows were misted up.  Anyway four of us turned up today.  Ian carried on with the seat latts and has now done 45 out of 54 that are needed.  Paul arrived and has taken away some spare window beads to machine some new ones for the doors that need to be done in oak.  Jim spent the morning installing the window sill in A side and I managed to fit the front seat bearer in A side.  The interior now looks like this.

It certainly makes a difference seeing both sets of seat bearers installed. I then started work on the trial assembly of a seat back and then tried it on both sides.  This revealed a mistake in the placing of the A side rear bearer (my fault)  This was then corrected and the seats are now interchangeable.  All that needs doing now is routing a slot in the front bearers to insert a tongue that holds the seat in position. 

You can see the way that the seat squab locks the back into place and the place where the tongue is going to fit under the seat nosing.   It won't be long before the interior of the saloon is finished.  We think that a tidy up of the saloon is called for next week.