Myself and Vince visited the CVR last saturday (24th June.) Not a lot to report other than we cleaned up and primed the two sidewalks on the Matisa (either side of the engine.)
An attractive shade of red oxide has made a change from the grey elsewhere. The remaining engine panels were painted grey though. Very little yellow remains now!
Very hot weather and Thomas the Tank was no help whatsoever……
Second main visit of the year to the Colne Valley on 13 May – we were lucky with the weather (despite threatening skies on more than one occasion!) and we even had a bit of a barbecue!
Mark arrived yesterday to make a head start on some of the mechanical and electrical bits and pieces and even stayed overnight in the cab of the Matisa! (Thats dedication to the cause! and I suspect the first time anyone has spent the night in there?!)
Today he continued with the electrics while myself and Vince prepared and painted the panelling to the engine area. The machine is now almost totally grey and looking better and better with every visit. Our aim at the moment is to deal with the worst remaining areas of rust so that the bodywork is smoothed and sealed ready for final preparation and its first new coat of yellow. We are currently looking into paint specification, colours and prices.
We also took a look at the Permaquip – the rear roller shutter seems to be totally seized and may have to be removed and replaced with something more suitable…
This was pretty much the sum of the work carried out this weekend, but one other thing worth mentioning is the issue we have with one of the Matisa’s fuel tanks! The machine has two tanks (which were both nearly full when we acquired it!) but we noticed recently that one has a small leak. A few weeks ago Mark drained most of the fuel from the leaking tank into drums for temporary storage in preparation for it’s repair. However this involves removing the tank which means taking up the walkway above and this is proving quite tricky at the moment!
Mark also made a repeat visit up to York on 29 April to collect yet more spares from our contact at Fastline. Once again we are very grateful for their continued support, advice and supplies whilst they carry out refurbishment of their tamper fleet.
Hopefully our trips will be more frequent now the days are longer so watch this space!
Finally have a look [url=http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/OTPPG/files/]here[/url] for our caption competition on the Yahoogroup!
First trip of the year for me up at the CVR today and I think we made good progress considering the limited daylight. We were also quite lucky with the weather it seems…
We decided because it was fine it would be a good opportunity to make a start on the roof of the Matisa – we had scraped most of the peeling paint off last year but it was still in a bit of a state so more scraping and sanding was required! We also removed the one remaining horn from the roof along with its associated pipework – this and another horn will be re fitted at a later date (one horn was missing when we purchased the machine.)
At lunch we purchased a huge paint roller which made a big difference in the time it took to cover the whole area with a first coat of grey primer. It certainly now looks a lot better but will probably need a final sand in places and another top coat to finish it off – probably in the light blue colour favoured by Scottish Region machines in days gone by…
Mark removed the old air filter from the front of the engine as we have a replacement to take its place. This is another item kindly donated by Fastline.
We hope to make another trip up there very soon to finish off other areas of bodywork (not much original yellow left now!) and also replace the last of the glass windows which is severely cracked but not completely shattered like the others were this time last year…
As it has been a while since the last update we thought it would be a good idea to do an article for the website bringing things up to date – what’s been happening behind the scenes, and what the future holds for 2006
Short, wet, cold days since October have prevented any serious work to the machines over the winter – indeed as detailed in the last article the Permaquip has remained securely wrapped up! Mark has managed to visit on a couple of occasions since October to work on electrics and engine. We are also still in regular correspondance with our contact at Fastline with regard advice and other parts we may be able to acquire during refurbishment of a couple of their tampers at York.
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A brief round-up of the last couple of weeks’ work.
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We’ve spent the last 9 months or so concentrating on the Matisa. We thought it was finally time to do something to the Permaquip!
The rear tool storage area of the vehicle had become a place to throw general junk. Ten months of rain and leaves and flaked rust also created an interesting substance. All of the junk and stuff was removed/scraped away, leaving a nice tidy area.
We also cleaned up one of the side panels and applied a first coat of white primer. This initial coat has greatly improved the appearance of the vehicle already!
On our next visit we hope to concentrate on the other side and making the cab area more watertight for winter.
A quick round up of recent progress…
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Dave and Mark spent the weekend at the Colne Valley Railway this weekend andmyself and Vince joined them today – a lot of progress has been made onceagain.
Yesterday they managed to sort out all the electrics in the Matisa andpractically re-wire the whole machine as it was thought to be easier tostart from scratch so they knew what was going on. All was ok and lights andsirens etc were all fired up (probably for the first time in years!) Thesenow just need to be reconnected to the control panel which needs to bere-fitted with the new switches and guages.
Today we cleaned out the rusty channels in the window openings inpreparation for the new windows to go in. We are currently still sourcing aprice for 5mm polycarbonate material to go into all 12 windows along withnew seals – this could be one of our largest outlays of cash so far but Ithink it is important to get this right on a machine with so many windows!
We also cleaned up and threw out some of the old plywood panelling from theinterior that had become warped as a result of water damage.
Some new headlights and door handles were fitted.
The missing engine componants continue to be fitted quickly with only a fewremaining parts outstanding. The gearbox transmission is still causing someproblems but we hope to have something sorted out soon.
The paintwork on both sides was re-sanded to try and elliminate anyblemishes that were still showing through the grey primer. As a result oneside is a bit patchy again now with yellow, bits of red (from old BR doublearrows painted on at some point in the past) and white primer (from its lastrepaint) now showing through again! Its getting a lot smoother now though!
Depending on timescales of delivery we may have some windows to go in on thenext visit (!) and a start will be made on the Permaquip which has so farbeen a bit neglected! We want to try and get the cab watertight again firstwhich involves sorting out the roof where water has been getting in, as wellas the front glazed panels of course. It also needs a couple of newbatteries and a general wash down and repaint but it is thought to be inbetter mechanical condition than the Matisa.
A quick round up of the project’s progress..
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Some excellent news over the last few weeks regarding the missing engine parts for the Matisa.
We have managed to source and retrieve nearly all the parts we need for the Rolls Royce engine and also some of the transmission. The mechanical side of things on this machine is now looking much better and now that we have the parts Mark and Dave will be fitting them during the next few work parties. All of the items were kindly donated by FastLine (formerly Jarvis) via one of our contacts – so a very big thank you must go out to him and of course the management at FastLine for agreeing to donate the parts to us.
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