Another cold and nearly freezing Wednesday, however a lot of jobs got done.  Ian finished putting primer on the brake column brackets and also the ratchet wheels that Mike Walker brought up, having fettled them.  After that he started on the long job of rubbing down the seat latts with fine sandpaper.  These are in pitchpine and there are 52 of them. Once they are rubbed down then they can be stained and varnished prior to installation. By the end of the day he had finished 12 of them and they are looking very nice.

Jim carried on with the various pieces of trim on the body. These all need fitting indiviually and shaping at the ends to fit round the rubbing rails etc.

I had been to Crich on Tuesday to measure up the lamp housing and the brake pawl on Chesterfield 8.  The work on the lamp made me realise that it fitted in a different way to what we had asumed.  I spent the morning making the 7th set of prototype seat frames.  After finding one or two points that I had got wrong at Crich, which I've corrected, I was finally able to make the patterns for them to be shaped by.  Hopefully we will be able to start on the seat units soon.  After lunch I measured the window frames for the lamp housings and discovered that rebates had been added to the frames at some point, probably when it was convertd to a mess hut in 1901.  I removed these and the openings look a lot better.  I now have to redo the drawings for the lamps.  In the final hour or so I cut drilled and countersunk the 10 steel strips that will be scewed to the rocker panels.  All in all another steady day.

First of all an apology to readers for the lack of an entry last week.  This was caused by me locking the tramshed keys in said shed by leaving them on the staircase.  Anyway Jim managed to get there today and we are back in business.

On my way there I collected the pawls for the brake column ratchets from H Downs and Son in Hudderfield.

These were of the usual excellent quality made from another very good pattern from Gerald at Heritage Patterns in Lockwood.  They are virtually ready for use apart from boring out and slotting a keyway in the centre and a little fettling of the flash between the teeth.  These go directly above the bottom brackets for the brake columns which are bolted onto the crown board. 

Here the brackets, which were profile cut by PP Profiles of Batley, are offerred up with the pawl pattern positioned in the correct place.  All this means that the design of the dash can continue.

Ian put primer on the brackets and Jim spent the rest of the day putting more beading onto various parts of the body.  These will look great when they are filled and painted.

I carried on with the prototype seat and produced Mk 5 which when it was pinned together looked like this.

Apart from a few minor adjustments we are now satisfied that we have got the design correct and that the seats will work as a mechanism.  A very good day's work.

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.

Another cooler Wednesday, well it is well into November I suppose.  Jim spent the day installing bodyside trim.  These are small mouldings that cover all the joints at the edge of the panels.  He cut  and shaped them last week and then primed them.  Today he pre-drilled them and put the stainless steel pins part way through before applying mastic and then hammering them home.  They make C side look nearly finished.  Ian put more coats of paint on various bits of metalwork and then spent the rest of the day rubbing down the paint on D end staircase and putting a smooth coat of primer on one stringer.  It looks very different.  I spent all day working on the design of the seat frames and by the end of the day had made three different protypes in 6mm ply before I got the shape that worked.  Now I need to remake the sample seat and try it in place.  We also had various visitors, including three other LTHS Committee Members and also Laurence Dutton from the Crich Workshop.  Laurence had very kindly produced some sample paint panels so that we can start ordering the undercoat and top coat for the body.  The primrose looks very nice and will set off the chocolate and white very nicely.  In the meantime I am carrying on with the drawings for the rest of the brake gear and hopefully will be able to order our last two patterns soon.

Another day another dollar as the saying goes, but in our case another staircase.  Jim spent much of the day working on fitting beading on the outside of the corner pillars, while I finished drilling the brackets for the B end stairs and then fitting the landing and fastening the brackets to the stairs.  All this took till well after lunch.  Paul spent the day grinding the other brake beam to shape and now they are ready for drilling and attaching to the brake blocks.  Ian carried on painting and then did some more rubbing down and cleaning of hardened mastic.  In the afternoon Jim and I fitted the B end stairs and finished by 3pm.  The tram now has both its staircases for the first time since 1901.  It's just a pity we can't trundle it out of the garage to take a photo (it's too tall to go through the door now that the roof planks are fitted). We did find that the landing had warped a little so fitted an extra coachbolt to pull it into shape.  Jim then carried on with the beading and I fitted a newly machined inner window sill so that I can have a go at creating a second seat mock up.  Another good day all in all.