Even though the bus was tucked up in the new garage, the jobs on site were not over and some effort was necessary to keep the project moving along, and one big job that required some co-ordination was the painting of the concrete floor. I thought hard about this, having been involved (during SM106's active service life) in painting a concrete floor with a solvent-based coating, and decided instead upon an acrylic sealant of the type specified for block paving or concrete driveways. 50 litres was sourced and a long-handled, fluffy roller and the painstaking sweeping of the floor commenced. The painting was done in two stages, each comprising two coats with SM106 being shunted with a neighbour's Ferguson TE20 tractor in mid-operation. The result was better than I had expected, with a low sheen and delightful easy-sweeping action. The euphoria was rapidly dispelled when news came that the spares and "work in progress" at the old garage had been crudely pushed to one side or piled in a heap out of the way just in time to become nicely wet in the first major rainfall of the approaching Autumn. The recovery was Swift, but painful and hugely assisted by tractor-man's Bedford TK flat-bed lorry. Quite a sight, looking like a tinker's scrap collection as it made its way along the Conwy Valley loaded with seat frames, used and new bodywork and all the jigs, tools and fixings that have accumulated during the project.

Material from the stores arrives at LL Photo © J.Wilkins

The spare engine ex SMS637 is lowered onto pallets Photo © J.Wilkins

A separate journey was organised for the engine and the loading and unloading was performed with the assistance of locally sourced telehandlers which abound in this farming locality. It has to be said that a great deal of sorting-out of parts was achieved as a consequence, but that would have happened without the general aggro. Landscaping of the site is another task that has taken time away from the bus, but it is honestly such a joy to see her in a clean, dry and bright shed that it is definitely all worth-while. The unruly heap of seat frames removed from the bus has always been a mess, and finding an out-of the way location where they are safe and not tangled in a heap was a priority. A chance find of left-over masonry-ties for concrete block-work was the key to simply hanging them from the intermediate stringers for the shed wall cladding. Clean, dry, accessible and out of the way. What more could we wish for?

Seat frames hanging in the larder Photo © J.Wilkins

The first substantive task in the new garage Photo © J.Wilkins

A strange turn of events took me to Guildford in the late Summer, not that I saw much of the place except a great deal of pretty forest and an industrial estate in the curiously named area of Normandy. The little time that I spent in the town was marked by severe traffic congestion and a few alien buses that were completely empty. Apparently, ARRIVA still operate a 463/462 service from Woking to Guildford via Clandon or Burpham, which is amusing because it was on the parallel, hallowed 436 (Guildford - Woking - Staines) that I took my only rides ever on a PRV-bodied Swift, back in the early 70s. I was immediately struck by the curious arrangement of the luggage pen and seating, which differed from the MCW-bodied vehicles on our northern routes. All the way to Staines in one hop! Then Slough. Uxbridge, Hemel Hempstead, St. Albans and Welwyn Garden City and I would be almost home. I have not been to Guildford since that time, honestly. The original 462 service was, of course, from Leatherhead to Weybridge, operated by an RF with a conductor on the only occasion that I used it.

Progress has to be made, however, and one task that was under way before the move was the reinstatement of the entrance doors, which require painting as you may imagine. And new rubber nosing, of course. Last Summer the salesman from a famous supplier (located near to Tunbridge Wells) of after-market rubber mouldings and weatherstrip called to see me, for some reason I am down as a trade customer because I use my work address for deliveries. I talked to him for a while about the door-nosing problem and asked if he might be interested in quoting for a compatible part? Out of the question, the market is too small and we'd have to run so many that pulling together enough customers for a production run would be impossible. As I have experience of trying to get three potential customers lined up for Park Royal glazing weatherstrip, I quite take the point. But the problem of the nosing has not gone away. So, I decided to run it past my old friends Mannerings of Catford, and they came up with a very reasonable-looking offer. Now I have to try and find as many customers as possible to make their investment worthwhile. Fortunately, spare 76mm rubber nosing has not been available for a long time, and our buses are in vogue these days, what with examples returning from Malta or emerging from storage after decades. Determined to make a difference, I finished the preparation of the grey side of the rear entrance doorway leaves and after tedious masking-off applied some primer undercoat to them. Mannerings also supply a comprehensive range of rubber buffers, so with luck I shall have all my doors in tip-top condition in due course. What a great end to a day - the first time that a smell of paint has filled the new garage!

The other area of unfinished rubber business is the front dome (the rear will follow automatically once success is evident). A long time ago I threw in the towel because nothing seemed to work at all. Keith in Hitchin assured me that the blind box on his Merlin was done with off-the-shelf rubber by a man who specialised in fitting glass, so I persisted and ended up talking to him directly. I explained that I could not insert the locking strip without pushing the glass into the hole, and he offered two suggestions (while not being able to tell me the exact pattern of the rubber). First, don't assume that it was a one-man job, and second don't be too liberal with the soapy water because it leaves everything so slippery it has no strength - use window-cleaner spray because it evaporates more quickly when it has done the job of lubrication. Well, I never did get around to trying again, so after a session of measurement I had another go with the weatherstrip originally chosen some five years ago. Basically the web is a bit thinner than indicated. The gap between the glass and the blind-box aperture is 16mm, which implies an 8mm web thickness, but the only logical weatherstrip (3mm glass and panel) has a web of just 6mm, or probably an old imperial quarter-inch. The priority task was to flat-down the primer on the entrance doors and apply grey undercoat, which was soon done and looking promising so could be set aside to do what paint does. Dry. I was soon feeling chuffed with the destination-blind glass insertion (by the way, the original glass that I have in stock has a very slight curve to match the front dome, I think). Then came the less chuffing attempt at fitting the ventilation air-intakes, which fought me all the way, determined to slip right into the aperture and misbehave in every way known to weatherstrip. At one point I had one in almost in place, but the rubber wasn't standing straight and when I tried to press it into place from inside the whole assembly came out again. Luckily they are much smaller and less fragile than the glass, of course. Eventually I had both intakes in place and the job looked really pretty. I knew that I needed an assistant to push from inside, so I didn't attempt to put in any locking strip but fetched my camera and wound the blind round to something less common for a progress picture. The instant I looked at the preview on the screen I knew that they had to come out again. The camera flash lit up the inside of the air-intake really well, and showed off-white paint. These were obtained as spares from SM533, which if you recall had been spray-painted an off-white colour, including the back of the hopper that catches the rain blowing in with the forward motion of the bus (the air goes upwards into the top of the 'nest boxes' to the fan assemblies). By now, however, I was quite blasé about fitting these, but it will still be a bit of a fag. "So it goes", as Kurt would have said if he was still with us. Incredibly, there is even a picture on the web of DPD 533J in its NUMARK guise, so it just goes to show that the Internet is a wonderful thing after all! Well done David Jones.

The front dome with glass and air-intakes Photo © J.Wilkins

A full and proper set of door leaves for the exit. They are shown opening wrongly to the side Photo © J.Wilkins

A tall volunteer was found for the pressing of the glass (well, he agreed to a tea-stop on one of his cycle rides around the varying terrain of the Conwy Valley) and the operation of inserting the filler in the weatherstrip around the destination blind box was completed without great difficulty. It can therefore be stated that IRS1295 from COH Baines will do the job, but it must also be said that the grip on the glass is not wonderful, and is as little as a few millimetres at the top, assuming that the glass is sitting fully in the groove at the bottom. However, I always promised myself that my bona-fide LH single-deck blind would be displayed once the box was properly glazed, so it will come out of home storage and be wound onto a spare roller ready for the next working visit.

Preparation of the trailing entrance door leaves has proceeded as far as the grey topcoat, so it was time to consider progress towards complete re-instatement and that meant recovering another handrail from the spares off SM533, because it turns out that MB door handrails differ from those on an SM, even though the doors and fixing details are the same. A great shame as I have a number recovered from MBA541 at Hitchin. Once again the screws were rusted solidly in place, so the only way forward was with a drill. It is tempting to start from the hollow nut because it has a natural centre to work from, but as it entails over an inch of steel screw to work through it isn't viable. The alternative involves starting a drill in the screw slot on the outside, with corresponding risk of breakage, but widening the hole to 6mm breaks off the countersunk head of the screw very promptly. I also proceeded to identify from the spares the correct exit door leaf to substitute for the one which was put into service by Blue Lake carrying a set of handrail holes where there should be none. Intriguingly it still had pink primer on it, so it says something about the availability of spares in the end-game. The handrails issue is serious, because Blue Lake cut the pair on the exit doors to install orange grips, and removed them fron the entrance doors altogether. Perverse, or just crazy? Anyway, after all the drilling another replacement was liberated and it was time for a bit of Autosol polish and a cup of tea. Further good news is that I have located a source of rubber buffers to replace those lost or sheared off during the preparation for painting. Just a tad smaller, but who will know?

Handrail recovery from spare door leaves (SM533) Photo © J.Wilkins

The saga of the entrance doors continues. I could not understand why the leading door, which is the only one finished so far, would not open fully. I realised that there are a number of adjustments but had not twigged that I had bungled the reassembly of the bottom hinge when it was unbolted for painting. Like all these things it became obvious when studied for long enough and compared with a set that worked properly. The centre of the hinge assembly (actually the dowel that sits in the bushed socket) has to be exactly in line with the working centre of the rubber seals on the folding edge of the door leaves. Otherwise it pulls out of true when open (obvious) and off vertical when closed (less obvious). Then the guide arm has to be in the correct position so that it does not prevent the door from opening fully (what started this particular investigation) and the channel in the top of the doorway has to be in the correct position so that the guide-arm presses the door onto the draught-excluder brushes when the door is closed. An expert might argue about some of this, but he, or she, was not around when needed, so thanks for nothing. A bit of self-help is always good. About this time there was an unfamiliar noise outside the garage, an engine indeed, so I assumed it was one of the regular comings and goings next door, but it continued to come nearer and I had to peep out to see what was happening, just as the engine stopped. It turned out to be Len pulling up in VOD ; he'd decided to go for a spin on a nice morning before giving her a wash. The kettle was put on and a proper welcome extended - after all I have enjoyed tea and company often enough at their location over the years! Lots to talk about and look at before we both took our leave with other tasks to perform elsewhere.

Another afternoon was snatched during a busy weekend that saw my first ever visit to Cardiff for a geology conference. I could not help noticing that Cardiff Bus/Bws Caerdydd run a very fine fleet of Mercedes Citaro buses. Very refreshing, especially as they now seem to have finally met their demise with First at Bury, but I was on Shanks' Pony and couldn't spare time for a ride. The job of preparing, masking and priming the outside, green-side of the entrance door leaves continued in earnest since it was known that all weekends in November were unavailable, and the weather was starting to close in. For entertainment, I hung the original 1971 LH destination blind in place and wound it round to 416 LEATHERHEAD Railway Arms; I am guessing that this was the first time that SM106 has displayed an LH blind for almost 40 years, and makes me wonder how many times in her life she has stood at at the Railway Arms awaiting time.

Of all the modern advertising initiatives it is surely "Black Friday" that takes the biscuit, though maybe "Black Friday Weekend" is worse, for the cheesiest opportunity by which retailers pretend they are doing us a favour by lowering their prices. Heading, as I was, towards Bluewater retail park, I wondered if the enthusiastic shoppers would impede progress around this magnificently re-purposed chalk quarry, remnant of the now vanished local cement-manufacturing industry. Hands up those who remember Tunnel and Blue Circle cement brands? In the end it seemed to make no difference at all, which suited me just fine. My vehicle was filled with seat cushions and backs upholstered with blue-check Celestra moquette, now rare and subject to all the usual problems of supply, so the opportunity to collect any useful material from a stockpile long held by a fellow London Merlin and Swift enthusiast could not be passed by. The seating had been stored for a while in a Leyland National that was in such poor shape that it was taken away for scrap, thus requiring a new home to be found for such valuable stock. In the event it proved to be a mixed collection from National, DMS and SMS vehicles, but generally in good condition, and occasionally pristine. This will go a long way to provide new covers for a number of very poor examples on my own bus, and parts for the 5-seater at the rear of the saloon which appears to be largely missing. A huge thank you to my benefactor, and for the opportunity to look over his vehicle, which despite November cold and a period out of use burst into life at the touch of the starter button, even without the throttle depressed. You cannot keep a good AEC down, it seems.

Long-lost SMA8 shows real promise under the dust and still wearing NF running number plate holder (out of shot). Photo © J.Wilkins

The spacious interior of the Alexander W Type bodywork. Photo © J.Wilkins

The weekend then proceeded like a safari through Essex and North Kent, starting with a drive through the frosty Epping Forest and finally over the bridge at Dartford under a perfect blue sky, while stopping off en-route to examine collections of rare and endangered buses. In this way I have crossed two fantastic bridges across iconic waterways, the Mersey and the Thames, in one week. The first stop was a dream come true, with three lanes of RT, RF and RM family vehicles in good to excellent shape, two of which were to be taken to the next staging point. So it was that I spent a half hour driving in convoy through the environs of Ongar behind a Green Line RF and a red RTW (in a cloud of more or less pungent exhaust fumes due to a rather poorly and misfiring Leyland O600). The drop-off point housed further delights, namely SM1 and SMA8 as well as other long-term restoration prospects. I have not seen an SMA since I visited Barnsley several years ago, so it was really good to see what a very nice vehicle it was, with its ramped floor and panoramic windows. It is a shame that the vehicles did not develop a good reputation during their localised, Green Line career as I think from a passenger perspective they may be superior to the very ordinary and rather cramped (due to the high seat-backs and armrests) interior of their RP class contemporaries. SMA8 is a potential gem under its layer of pigeon manure and feathers (I hope). Picking up the ferry crew members, we continued over the river to Northfleet and the London Bus Company. Here the establishment was not unlike a small LT central area garage of olden days, with a large number of operating vehicles, some being prepared for their duties on wedding hires. On the other side of the yard stood four buses of great interest, RP21, SMD88, SMS753 and MBA539; the latter I saw last in the station yard at Ongar looking tired but serviceable, and now freshly-painted and being prepared for MOT. Round the back stood XF1 and SMA13 amid a number of more or less hopeful vehicles, some in very poor shape indeed, while the inside was a revelation with vehicles being worked on and repainted including DMS1052.

My Espace looks more than ever like a black cab in such esteemed company Photo © J.Wilkins

SMD88 sees the light of day again and showing reflections from SMS753. Photo © J.Wilkins

Then it was time to get to work measuring-up the door-nosing rubber on the SM and DM type and there soon came an unexpected finding. The SMD and SMS vehicles had smaller nosing rubber in the exit doors than the entrance. DMS1052 showed the same, and a later DMS with Glider doors was completely different, as expected. So, SM106 appears to be unique in having 88mm rubber nosings in all positions, and logically, there should not be room for an extra 64mm of rubber between the support poles! Anyway, the survey showed that some vehicles needed new rubber more than others, but there is good scope for sales. More amazing still was bumping into a man looking for a new offside windscreen for SM11 which he had repatriated from Malta and found to be fitted with Perspex. Ultimately, it was time to pack up and set off home to North Wales, leaving the team to get on with preparing MBA539, so many thanks to Roger, Keith W, Paul, Keith V and everybody else who gave access to the locations and vehicles mentioned. An inspiring trip.
Spotting list of vehicle classes:
RT, RTL, RTW, RLH, STL, RF, GS, XF, MB, MBA, SM, SMS, SMD, SMA, RP, SNB, LS, RM, RML, RMC, RMA, DMS & T. Phew! I should now go and lie down in a darkened room.

The only Renault Espace with Celestra moquette Photo © J.Wilkins

Spare cushions in stock for component recovery and modification Photo © J.Wilkins

Passing along the London Road from Northfleet I was struck by the frequent appearance of Arriva Sapphire buses labelled 480 (and 490). These are the direct descendants of the London Transport bus route with the same number, and I should have been seeing RML buses in green livery. One of the double-deckers was on suspended tow, proving that even modern machines have their foibles! A bonus was arriving home in time to see the start of the new 'noir' series on BBC4 'Les Témoins (Witnesses)' whose principal actor is an extremely attractive detective who was at one point scrabbling around in the dirt under a derelict bus in a scrapyard. Another of the main characters is played by the magnificently flame-headed Audrey Fleurot, my favourite French TV actor - she also played the fickle lawyer from 'Engrenages (Spiral)'. An excellent start, and I look forward to great things as the plot develops: a dozen deep-frozen stiffs sitting on an abandoned bus (a Setra, not a Renault - shame). Zut alors!