Feeding carriages, railcar interiors and boat crews!

Finally!  An update!

Sorry for the lack of updates, this does not reflect a lack of progress, just many things going on (mainly good!).  Progress continues at Stockholm Östra every Tuesday evening.  Our teak carriage, 880, lives outside and, particularly the west side, takes the brunt of the weather.  Plans for covered accommodation are well advanced, but until they come to fruition, we do our best to preserve what is there.

As soon as it is undercover, it will be scraped back and re-varnished properly.  Until then we feed the side with a mix of linseed oil and turpentine before every winter.  Somewhat conversely, this has the effect of making the carriage look worse, as it forces all the black rotted wood out from between the grain of the good wood onto the surface, but beneath, it keeps the rest of the wood good until the day we can address it properly

Nights are drawing in, by the time we were finished, it was almost dark.

Over in our restoration shed, work continues with 33.  New trim between the walls and the ceiling is being rebated to take the strips that cover ceiling joins, then attached.

I have finally got the last bit of ceiling trim in place, the long one between the partition and the ceiling, white in the above photo.  This one fought be all the way ...

Finally, everything in place and all nail and screw holes filled with filler.

Bengt and Lasse have finished recovering the floor in A-saloon with new hardboard and have started stripping back B-saloon to bare floorboards before doing the same there.  Elsewhere the other Lasse continues to chip and paint the underframe, Soren and Daniel were working on our passanger-rated goods/brakevan, and Micke was running around doing several things.  There was othre activity going on, but I didn't get a chance to run around and check up on everyone so I'm not completely sure what was going on!

And those other distractions?  One of them was Constantia, the 108 year old schooner I am involved with.  The first weekend in October is the annual Saltkråken Race in which many of the Stockholm area traditional sailing ships take part.

This year we had 9 ships averaging 88 years in age.  We also had virtually no wind, so it was a pretty slow race!  Here you can see 3 ships that all started their lives as North Sea Fishing ships just before WW1, but from different countries.  Shamrock (left) was built in Holland while Sunbeam (centre) is a Lowestoft Trawler from England and Ariel (left) was built in Norway.  After the fishing industry went over entirely to steam in the 1930s, all three came to Sweden and continued to work as fishing or small cargo vessels long enough to be preserved.  All three have had their sailing rig restored to near original condition although have all gained various deck-houses and have had the holds converted for accommodation.

If anyone is interested, there is an album of photographs from the weekend here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/44765602@N03/albums/72157659397588316/with/21943701705/

and some film here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ub5hn01GMk

best regards from Stockholm,

George!

Brakes floors and the trimmings

Micke and Lasse S were re-installing the handbrake at B-end

Micke tightening the bolts for the bracket on the inside of the headstock

On the outside of the headstock sits another bracket on which the vertical column turns.  Here you can see the linkage in place.

Behind is a large curved link that transfers the movement of the brake shaft around the headstock and to the horizontal.  Now all in primer.

Inside, Lasse C and Bengt have begun laying a hardboard skin on top of the old floorboards as a precurser to laying new lino.  If you look closely you can see the pencil marks that they are using to show where the joints in the floorboards are, i.e. where not to nail down the hardboard!

More small details painted up and added.  Here one of the mounts for the ceiling vents.  We must remember to cut a hole in the roof canvas for this one before we mount the inside vents themselves or this one will not work so well!

I've started to add the trim between the walls and the ceiling.

Covers for the cable runs below the doors also being added and painted up.

Lasse has been working on the monitor/regulator for the dry air machine we are installing in 880, our 1914 built carriage.  He had it nicely set up at home, calibrated to 3 other devices.  By the time he got it back to the shed it was way off again ...  My suggestion of dipping it in boiling water to set the 100% level was not so well received.

best regards from Stockholm Östra, George!