Well, a very good week with a lot done but not a lot to show.  We actually had two work days as on Tuesday, Andy Bailey, a volunteer at Crich, came up to scrape the bearings in. This was a skill beyond any of us and was fascinating to watch.  We broght the underframe out of the top garage, laid the spare length of track and rolled the first wheelset out.  The bearings were cleaned of their protective coating and then coated in engineers blue.

The bearing was then put onto it while the blue was still wet and rubbed round.

The resulting pattern was then looked at.

The bearing was then put in the vice and scraped.

This process was repeated until the blue area was an even oval strecthing the whole length of the bearing.  The bearing was then numbered with the serial number of the wheel next to it.

Meanwhile Stephen and I worked on the body.  I spent the day trial fitting the doors and sorting put the door tracks.  These needed some interesting woodwork but now work.  Stephen spent the day marking out and planing more support strips to go at the back of the steps.

We are very grateful to Andy for coming up to sort the bearings out. 

Today Jim and I spent the day detailing the interior.  Jim worked on the boards that go between the screens above the doors.  These are now marked and ready for the arches to be cut out.  I started by running a die nut along the threads on the catenary rods and then drilled the pattresses that they run through above the screens.  These had been cast and polished for us in Bradford.  The afternoon was spent sorting out the various holes in the screens that need cutting to allow the catenary rods to come through to the pattresses and then the brackets on the monitor ribs.  All will make sense when we get them installed and I can show some pictures.  However the trial fit of the door revealed that I had mis-measured for the upper runner pulleys and these are going to have to be reduced by 4mm. on their diameter to allow the doors to work.  Once the doors are hung then we can install the catenary rods.  Then the screens can be fitted and the interior will look very different.  All in all a very good week.