With our first public running day of the year coming up on St Patrick’s Day, our volunteers on Saturday were definitely in a Spring-cleaning mode, as we started getting the railway ready for the public again.
Mark, Callum and Connor were hard at work all day in the bright sunshine cleaning the platform edge with wire brushes and applying a lovely shiny new white line, vital to assist passengers getting on and off the train especially in low light. It also looks very neat, and reminds us we have a whole lot more painting and cleaning to do.
Meanwhile, steam legend Jeff was out the front driving an internal combustion machine for a change, though this was just his lawnmower cutting the station lawn, he’ll be back to working on the steam loco soon.
John, Aaron and Guy removed the perished tarpaulins from one of last year’s Irish Traction Group arrivals, A class locomotive A3R. Removing the old tarpaulins, straps and ropes took hours, and they were still putting the new tarps in place as sunset approached. As well as protecting the bodywork ahead of eventual repairs, it also makes the siding look a bit less tatty for our passengers while they wait for their trains.
As you can see, there’s plenty of work you can do as a volunteer if you don’t fancy the heavy engineering or hard slog of driver/guard duties. Hint hint, if you feel you’d like to contribute to the continued success of Ireland’s only full size heritage railway, please visit our volunteering page.
