An update for you on my blog last week regarding the Thomas The Tank show. I mentioned how we'd strenghtened the stage to take the weight of the trains, which are over a tonne each.
First the good news. Our sums were right. Where we had bolstered the strength, it held up.
Now the not so good news, which I received at half five on Friday night. During the tour (as happens with most tours while they are on the road), the show had been refined and improved. As part of that, Thomas was now using a much greater area of the stage than we had believed. Unfortunately we had only strenghtened the area we thought was needed.
There was only one way to find out if this was a problem.. to ask Thomas to rehearse! And so he did.
Crack... Crack... Crack...
After a few panicked phone calls, it was clear there were two options: to somehow spend more money on Friday teatime to make the whole stage stronger, or to think about cancelling some or all of the shows. Well as a father of 2 who were due to come the next day, it was clear that upsetting around 2000 children wasn't an acceptable outcome.
Thankfully, the next phone call to Totem Timber went well, and despite the fact that they were on their way home, were able to supply what we needed. Our maintenance and technical teams worked around the clock, as they do so often, without anyone (including me) ever noticing or appreciating.
The result was that the show went on, and thankfully no children witnessed a train crash at Millbay Station this weekend.
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