Restoring Sunderland 16’s shine…

Sunderland tram 16’s partial repaint started at the beginning of September, aimed at refreshening the appearance of the tram and also attending to some areas where bare wood was starting to become visible.  This is phased work, with the lower deck being tackled now, in time for the tram to re-enter service in October, and then a follow-up phase will address the upper-deck paintwork.  Catching the problems now will hopefully mean that further deterioration is arrested, or at least slowed down, and that water ingress (the enemy of the wooden bodied tram) can be kept to a minimum.

Below: John Marshall has been contracted to carry out several jobs on the transport collection at Beamish, and made a start on 16 by rubbing the panels that are being repainted back, then treating any degradation in the timber skin.  He then primed and undercoated these areas – the stage which is seen in this photo.

Below: Over the primer and undercoats, go the topcoats.  Each layer is extensively flatted in between, to build up smooth layers for the final finish.

Below: 16 is seen alongside Lisbon 730, which itself is receiving a lot of attention in the workshops at the moment.  Gateshead 10 is under the sheet to the left of this view, and Newcastle 114 is out of sight to the left.  The tramcar fleet is receiving a great deal of attention at the moment, from volunteers, staff and contractors.

Below: Another view of the depot, widely in use as a workshop now.  The lack of insulation on the building rather forces the period of time into which paintwork can be carried out – whence the current flurry of progress in this particular area.

Below: Signwriting on 16 (and Gateshead 10) is in the hands of Aaron Stephens, who trades as Valentine’s Signs.  He previously worked for the famous Carter’s Steam Fair.  Sunderland 16 has a mixture of painted and gilded lining, the latter being applied to the maroon panels.  The first step is to mark out the position of the lining, which is done in chalk.

Below:  Once the chalk marks have been applied, size (a sort of thin adhesive) can be applied and allowed to dry off a little.  Once this is deemed to have the correct amount of tackiness, gold leaf is applied by pressing sheets of the metal (which are paper-backed) onto it.  The leaf sticks where the size is applied, and nowhere else. Here Aaron is applying the leaf to the thicker of the two lines – you can just make out the thinner line above is a different colour.

Below:  Aaron has also applied the base colours for the numbers, with the main element being gold, with a blue and black shade to this.  16 originally had transfers, painted on the reverse, applied.  These remain for the ‘Sunderland Corporation Transport’ but where the numbers, for example, are being hand painted, they will lack all of the fine black lines of the transfer process.  So it will be possible to tell, in the future, which era a photo of 16 was taken in, based on scrutiny of its fleet numbers!

Below: Whilst the gold leaf is applied, John has been flatting back the end adverts to remove the varnish (that has not lasted well).  He will then re-varnish these to protect the paint beneath.

Below: The side ‘decency’ panels, upon which the advert for Williamsons is currently carried, have water ingress and delamination evident, so John has flatted these back and treated the wood, and is making good the paintwork to ensure the damp is repelled as much as possible.  These panels will be repainted in the next phase of work, being restored to fleet livery rather than advertisement (as this tram is no longer sponsored).  The maroon areas beneath this (above the lower deck windows and platform vestibules) will also be repainted at this time.

We will return to the progress on 16, and the other trams, in one of the regular Workshop Diary features (which have replaced the T&I News round-ups, largely in name only at present!).