WN15 - A varied flugel - by Kerry Young

2nd November 2006

Seven days already? My how time flies when you're having fun! (Yeah, right!) So what have we to show for the day? They say a picture's worth a thousand words, so being lazy, I'll answer the question that way..............

Starting with the railcar. The ongoing saga in fact. Colin (Sir) has brought it onto road two of the workshop so more people could work on it. You will remember Blair from an earlier episode and he was called in to deal with more of the tin worm. (Rust.) This time in the window sills.

Blair with his automotive background, wastes no time in dealing with the rust problem. Not a pretty sight and it sure gets right into it as seen above........

We reckoned he'd be on his way to China if he didn't stop. (To China? Comes from my very young days. It was thought that if you could dig right through the earth starting in New Zealand, you would come out in China. I think this has since been disproved. However, if someone was out fencing and digging a deep corner post hole, you would always tell them they had gone too deep if they came out in China!)

Jim at the bench and Mike on the lathe, are both cleaning the threads on the nuts and bolts taken from the tracks lifted at Firestone. Mike has a Coventry diehead in the chuck and is holding the bolt heads with a crescent while chasing the threads with the diehead. Jim is tapping the nuts.

You would be hard put to know, but that's Jolly Roger using whatever works best to clean up the plate that forms the lower portion of the back of the cab for 'F13'.

Mirthful Max and our Keith are deep in meaningful conversation as Keith fits a gate to the end platform of 'A1177'.

Not a garden gate, but the proper thing to try and keep the passengers all aboard the car when in motion.

Ah, Bob the builder with a big smile. Let's face it, this is such a happy place. In this case though, he has suddenly realised the dreaded Flugel camera has been waved his way. Already the new headstock has been attacked with a paint brush.

As for me, I finally got all the footplates drilled, countersunk and bolted down. Then set about the same process for the steps. Not a very clear picture, but you can see they have been fitted.

Now for something a bit different..............

A certain Mark Denne of Timaru, who has been particularly helpful with early pictures, asked if we couldn't see something of the Aeronautical Society premises and exhibits. Seems fair to me, so here you are Mark. This being the entrance to the larger hangar.

The first exhibit being this ex Operation Deepfreeze DC3, donated by the United States Navy many years ago.

Through the wall and we have an ex NAC (National Airways Corporation.) Viscount in the process of restoration. These were a four engine turbo prop aircraft. This one was called the 'City of Christchurch'.

That's enough for today folks. There's more to come on this subject with future issues. See you next week, Cheers, 'K'.