The more things change.....

Mary and I went up on saturday, just for a day. I guess its quite a thing to get up early, drive 200 miles, work for 5 hours and then come home again. But its starting to become strangely normal.....

We fired up the Stanley range to provide some heat, set the ipod shuffle up and set to with the rust converter. There is lots more to do, but after a week of hard work and needle gunning at half term, this seemed quite pleasant. Mary did the sides and I did the ceiling, using Vactan, the conversion product mentioned before. There is still lots more to go, but its nice to do a 'building up' instead of 'tearing down' task.

The waterways museum has a new barge, Service, that they plan to turn into a floating classroom. Mary and I looked at the clean interior and reflected on the fact that we've had to gut Misterton to get the same result. Hey ho. One thing that is apparent from the picture is how much deeper a Sheffield sized keel is as the bow is much higher out of the water than Misterton.

Alan's team had been able to make some progress in between the rain. The front crews quarters has some new plate and an access hatch tack welded in place. We'll be putting some water tanks down there...

In the engine room, there are saddle tanks either side, these would've been filled with canal water to ballast the stern down when running empty. They're no longer needed, but the space can be used for storage. The first one has been cut out here (hint - its the most rusty bit with the blue tub sitting in it)

Thats about it, tune in for more of the same, oh, anytime in the next three months.

Mary has also updated her views here.