After taking a short break from the carriage and letting the carpenter finish his work, the KSEL team started to look into the future for the carriage.
Continuing from the last blog, the carriage has now been painted one colour and finally looks like one complete carriage rather than different green and brown carriages being patched together! The team decided on a light brown colour for the carriage to try and replicate how it would have looked originally whilst also making the carriage weather proof and safe guarded.
Additional to this all of the glass windows have now been fitted inside their new designated slots and the likelihood of them slipping down is now minimal. The carriage itself is currently stable, straight throughout and robust – something that was definitely not the case a couple of months back! Now that the carpenter has finished with the guards half of the carriage, we are able to see the carriage take shape and form a resemblance of how it might have originally looked.
Earlier in the month, one of the KSEL team members ordered some bespoke signs to add a touch of character and personalisation to the exterior of the carriage, making a trademark to the work achieved on the carriage. The signs were customised and made to order which suited the carriage whilst being able to fit into the designated sign slot on the exterior of the carriage. The 662 replicates a sign which would have been on the outside of the carriage to show the carriage number to other coaches when the carriages were made – much alike our trains now. We feel as though these signs add unique features to the carriage and makes our carriage very much a KSEL carriage.
As the month progressed, we were able to fit the light fittings into the ceilings of the carriage and sync these lights with a remote for the carriage. The remote works such that you are able to turn on a set number of lights at a time and can potentially have just the guards half lit up, or just the passenger side lit up – how posh! This has been an ongoing quest for KSEL which threw up some fairly major complications for the carriage, but finally we are able to have lighting fixtures in the carriage so that the workers inside have no excuse to slack off the calligraphy that needs doing!
The front and back of the carriage have also been finished! Towards the end of last month, the carpenter finished the work for the rear of the passenger side of the carriage and the front of the guards side of the garage. These were made using the original parts of the carriage combined with new wood to replicate how the carriage would have looked originally.
