Over the last few weeks we have been setting up for riveting all the new plate work into place, this has included making some long series 1/2 and 5/8 rivet snaps to get into the tight spots on the frames. To date after 1,  1/4 days of riveting we have put in about 200 rivets along the cabin sides and veranda bottom.

 

The dust seals for the rear of the axles boxes are in the process of being made, the old method used to be a sheet of ply wood with some leather attached around it to try and keep dirt out and as much oil as possible in, when we restored the Midland Open we decided to use some engineering plastic instead of the ply as an experiment this proved successful and is now being tried on the toad.  Now the hole for the journal has been cut the next process is to mill them to the correct thickness so they fit in the back of the axle box castings and radius the corners.

 

 

The springs are now ready for collection to be overhauled this week, hopefully most of them can be repaired

 

Over the last few weeks between working on the toad a few of us have been cleaning up the buffer beams on the BR Std brake van, the draw hook, the screw coupling have been taken off inspected, cleaned and painted. The 2 photos below show the Bath end completed and the bottom shows the Oldand end equipment in the work shop being painted