The blog may have had a week off, but there hasn’t been any let up in action at Preston.
There has been further progress with the repairs to Wootton Hall’s tender tank with Ian Massey welding in a new front plate last Tuesday.
Matt Crabtree has also continued his welding work on the tank, seen here last Friday using a magnet to hold a new piece of metal in place prior to tacking it in place with weld.
Fluff’s new cab roof is now well and truly in place with Phil Bell drilling some fixing holes.
The work on the roof on Great Eastern Railway Royal Saloon No.5 is also heading towards a conclusion. John Dixon has been fitting the last of the vents, including some new lead fittings. 
He has also been replacing some missing step boards with wood from old church pews supplied by Fred. (Note the suitable kneeling position…!)
Over at Embsay, Andy Booth has been cutting out Cumbria‘s old tubes in readiness for a boiler examination last Thursday. Matt Anderson had removed the blast pipe, blower and brick arch in readiness for the re-tubing. The photo by Mike Rigg’s son last Wednesday shows the old tubes propped up against the front buffer beam.
The new tubes were transported across to Embsay last Friday, with Matt Crabtreee on hand to perform the tricky exercise of extricating them from the FRT shed at Preston with the fork lift truck.