Adjustments were made to the battery box today and a start made on installing the various bits of "furniture". This was later installed into the chassis.

So just how is the weight of the carriage apparatus frame and net supported?

The carriage apparatus frame and net (the part that collects the leather pouches) is very heavy, in fact it comes in several parts and the two big parts take at least two strong men to lift. So how is it balanced when in use on the coach? The answer lies in this picture, a load of balancing weights. These will each be used to counter balance the net as it is lowered from the coach, they are installed inside a cupboard at the end of the net lever.

The ones here will be enough for two coaches and have just been painted in readiness for the apparatus equipment to go back on. They will now go into storage out of our way.

A TPO coach has many padded peg rails and ours is no exception, with all of them needing renovation before M30272M returns to traffic.

All of those that came with the vehicle are being repaired as time permits and they often act as fill in jobs while you are waiting on another part of the project. Here we see a padded rail before work really starts on it. We are finding that BR repaired many of the padded rails, they simply put a new covering on top of the original one. As such we are removing the top covering and replacing it with a new one, just as BR did.

By having all these parts repaired during quiet period we should be able to reassemble the inside very quickly when the time comes. This padded rail is one that is fixed in position and will be nailed to the internal wall.

Here we see two moveable padded rails awaiting repairs. As the rail was moveable it had the carriage number painted upon it, so as not to wander! However, they did wander and we now have examples not only from M30272M but also M30233M and M30250M.

These movable peg rails would be used to create extra storage for bags over the doorways and apparatus area while travelling. On a TPO every usable bit of space was taken advantage of.

Work Week - One of the cantrails has been prepared by Pete Silver. This one showing the scarf joint for joining to another section of cantrail. Note the mortises just beyond the scarf, these being for connecting to the tennons of the door pillars.

The cantrail is in place.

The recently restored leather straps, used with the leather pouches during an exchange, started do delaminate. This was found to be caused by the neatsfoot oil used to restore the straps rotting the original thread. So Brian has taken on the challenge of re-sowing the straps with new thread - no easy task, with each hole having to be drilled out and double stitched with needles and thread that are very large!

A view showing all the roof hoops on the coach, held in place by a massive number of "G" clamps and spaced out using the wooden roof spacers. We just need to get them all aligned correctly and the height level so that we don't have a wavy roof.