The Erecting Shop

After three days of hard work in the freezing cold winds this week we have been able to create a shelter for our locomotive. It’s an industrial tent 6m by 12m by 4m high to the eaves. Erecting the frame work for the roof (below left) was relatively straightforward apart from an apparent error with bracing struts, but we have managed to assemble it.  Getting the  cover on was interesting, with a heavy sheet about 12.5m by 15m with no markings for the apex or to differentiate gable end edges from sides, and folded tightly for packing so the fabric was sticking to itself.  A video shows two people lifting one side of a smaller tent to insert the two-piece tubular support legs, but as can be seen at lower right, we needed two machines and at times had 4 people on it.  By the end of day two we had it up, with just enough fastenings to the concrete and ties to the covering sheet to be secure in the relatively quiet conditions.  Today we got the wrinkles out of the covering sheet, the framework secured to the concrete and got the cover snugged down to the tubular framework.

Time and the rising wind made it inadvisable to put the ends on the tent, but as you can see below left we were able to manoeuvre Prince George under shelter where she will be for some time to come while we build the frame assembly.  Completion of the tent will be dependent on reasonably quiet weather.

Prince George under shelter

Motion plate and frame stretcher ready for assembly

Looking forward to the future, we have the motion plate and frame stretcher to hand (right), the front frames and the dragbox are coming on well, so we have much to look forward to.  More on that shortly.