Downpipes complete.

Friday at Broadway.

Good weather, not to hot, and we are making hay.  Just two of us at Broadway, on bricks that Friday.

We're on the back wall, as there is no progress with getting more specials. John was working on the southern half of the back, where he reached row 23. This was mostly laying half bricks, which is very slow. 

This is the view of Friday's work, from the inside - one row along the top, just visible by its wet, darker mortar.

We still have plain bricks around the building, so can carry on doing the back wall, which is all plain. We will run out of bricks by the building at some point of course, but we have several more pallets in a truck, which will be retrieved by the RRV on Friday Aug 1st - it's a date !

No service trains on Friday, but there was a silver Fire & Drive experience about.

Here it is, trundling into Broadway, as seen from the signal box.  

Looking the other way, here is the southern end of the building, where the 'toilet' window is almost bricked in now, after John put two courses on here.

 

 

Saturday, out with the gang.

Broadway this time, down to Peasebrook farm. We had a fun list of faults to find, and check off.

The first one was an old friend, clips that keep pinging off the crossing at Broadway south. We inserted an extra pad underneath the baseplate, to limit its movement. We'll see. The day started damp, as you can see, but warm.

The next one was a bit further down, on the other side, after a tricky diagonal crossing (the single line crosses from the up side to the down side as it enters Broadway). 

In the background are the brick parapets to Pry Lane bridge, much used recently by Severn Trent, building an extension to the sewage treatment plant, which has now completed (and was running, as we sat there and ate. Interesting flows of sewage, this way and that.) 

The item here was a sighting of whitish ballast, a sign of pumping. This was a bit puzzling. We have 8 ins of bottom ballast here, and frequent tamping, and yet there is pumping. 

We watched a train go over to confirm the movement, then we Robelled several sleepers around the spot.

This was 3850 approaching, tender first, and one of two 2-8-0s out on Saturday. 

When the train came back the job was done, so we watched the sleepers behave perfectly as it passed.

The other 2-8-0 also chugged by effortlessly. Here we were looking at two reportedly cracked concrete sleepers, but there was no real action to be taken, as the cracks were minor and quite old.

Then we moved down to Peasebrook, opposite a farm with horses in several paddocks. Some horses seem extremely nervous, and began to run around just by us being there. Others continued to graze unfazed, even as we began to work. 

This was the spot, where there was a long dip on the Malvern side. We packed over 40 sleepers here, all down the Malvern side. Strange that this minor movement should continue, even after we invested quite a bit of money here a couple of years ago, reducing the height of the ballast by contractors, and widening it to support the shoulders. Another long embankment that we have, at Gretton, sees little or no such movements.

During our sleeper packing, we were watched over by our dependable lookout - Dave.

 

His eyes steely, his gaze unwavering, steadfast the stance. 

All the robelling means that a constant supply of ballast is required. This is to fill the holes left by the tamper, after the ballast is encouraged to migrate into the voids under the sleepers.

The ballast has to be found from elsewhere, wherever there is a surplus, dug up, and carried back to where the guys are working.

And that on a hot, damp, muggy day like Saturday. 

 

 

 

Sometimes you just have to take a rest then, where the only support is the truck.

After we finished this fairly lengthy, say 35 yard long, stretch off we were ready for tea. We put away the tools, dropped off any rubbish and headed to the toilet block. (did you know that it is one of the oldest structures on site, pre-dating our arrival?)

 

There we found this new little monument, made up out of three ground signals. Isn't that nice!

 

 

Monday at Broadway.

Two of us on site on Monday.

The first thing that happened is that the mixer died. This is what a dead mixer looks like - upside down. Just as we were emptying the first mix into the barrow, there was a grinding noise, and it seized up. We had to empty the drum by hand - lovely. Luckily we had a second one on site. This one had once suffered  a broken belt, but was repaired by Neal, so it was ready to spring into action.

On Monday John continued along the rear, where the wall goes on rising steadily. You can see that this part (the southern half) is just half a dozen courses away from the steel frame. John does an excellent job here, the bricks are laid cleanly and straight.

 

 

 

From the inside we can see the courses above the internal blocks, which have been laid in the last few days.

The northern half (right, off camera) is still a bit lower though. 

 

 

 

 

We had a nice visitor at Broadway on Monday, Greg. Greg has been a supporter of the line since 1976, way before the famous derailment. He was in charge of the Toddington site in 1981, later rose to be plc board director, and today is closely involved with the Restoration & Archiving Trust at Toddington, the charity behind the museum at the rear of P2. He has a great deal of experience in rescueing old railway artifacts and restoring them, and we consulted him about our GWR upholstered bench, and how to treat the woodwork.

There was a very useful chat in the Broadway gang's shed. Behind Greg is a real enamel totem of Broadway station. It came to us in about 2015, but we can't use it (except in the shed) as our line didn't have totems. Maybe it's for sale? As it's a replica, it is in immaculate condition.

After lunch there were increasing squalls, and John had to get a jacket, despite the general warmth that is still around. 

On the southern corner John has reached the 24th course of bricks, and has set out the 25th. We cut 120 plain bricks in half for him, to make 240 (half) headers. That makes a heck of a lot of dust, but as it was a Monday, there were no trains running. 

Neal has been busy in the greenhouse, even on Sunday. They were riveting more of the steelwork. And yet there is still more work to do, he says, which is why we have not yet started on manufacturing the many wooden dagger boards that we will be needing for Broadway.

 

 

Wednesday with the Usketeers.

A very satisfying day, as we were able to complete the fitting of both sets of downpipes, front and back.

Last week were were prevented from going any further, as we realised that we needed to raise the pipe run around the back, so that we would have a straight drop over the plinth, and a swan neck over it. Instead of a constant diagonal. An urgent order from the cast iron pipe supplier was needed.

 

 

The special, additional order promptly arrived at the Blogger Country Pile, and was taken to the weighbridge on Wednesday.

It was like Christmas! There was great delight in opening the box.

In the background is the plastic pipe that we are replacing. 

 

 

 

But before that, Dave had a shock. When he unlocked and opened the door of the weighbridge first thing, a pigeon flew out past his ear.

That pigeon had flown down the chimney, and must have spent the best part of a week in there, there was birdshit everywhere. Paul had to get a bucket of water and rinse the floor, as well as about half of the surfaces. Arghhhh !

We thought about a cover for the chimney pot, but it is a particularly wide one, not the usual standard width, so how we prevent a recurrence is not clear. Perhaps it was a one off occurrence, because we have not had a bird in the weighbridge before. 

 

 

 

It took quite a while to unwrap all the cast iron bits from their protective bubble wrap, but finally we were there, and here they are, laid out near their intended place of use.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Before we could start fixing the new bits to the wall, we had to finish off what we were doing the week before. 

We wire brushed the original downpipe, ready for painting with black Hammerite, and Dave cleaned the inside of the gutters, before doing both paint jobs. 

 

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, Paul got the gutter sealant gun out and filled in the joints where the pipes met.

The finger is the best distributor of sealant... 

 

 

 

 

 

Having finished the back, we addressed the side, and all the new bits that we bought.

We pushed on through, and by the end of the afternoon, we had it all mounted, and looking great.

What we need to do next week is decide the height of the ACO drain, and set it in concrete. 

The leftovers after the downpipe mountings - broken original bits, and some new castings that were too long.

We also completed the fitting of the front downpipe. This needed an extra collar with ears (several items do not come with fixing ears, so that needs some thought to get a stable construction). One of these items without fixing ears was the swan neck, needed to go over the plinth, and here you can see that we fixed it in position from underneath, followed by a plastic bend that we found in the C&M yard, which will route the stormawater away from the walls. Them we backfilled the hole. The plastic bend won't be visible, as it is underground. Only genuine cast iron will meet the eye.

It was unfortunately not possible to take the stormwater away from the site in a longer drain, as the new deck is in the way, and the terrain around has been raised over time. 

Our last shot of the day is of the C&M lads dismanteling the former Building & Services workshop. This is coming down, as the roof is damaged, and some of the uprights are beyond saving. The workshop was vacated several years ago when the (-renamed C&M) moved their activities into the workshop behind Churchward House.

This process has taken place once before. Originally, this workshop was built and used by the builder D.A. Cook from 1968 onwards. The business grew, and when we bought Winchcombe (and the rest of the railway) in 1981 we sold them a site further up the yard, where they built a new workshop and new HQ. 

The business continued to grow, and about 5 years ago Cook's sold their second workshop, yard and HQ to the railway. That is what we now know as Churchward House.

 

D A Cook's Head Office in 2018 - now GWSR Churchward House.

 

PWay news from Wednesday.

 

The gang was at Gretton today, our longest stretch of wooden sleepered track. 

These sleepers were second hand when laid in the 1990s, so not in the finest condition even 30 years ago.

You can see the issue with this sleeper here. It's got a little sapling growing out of it, and the chair is held on by a throughbolt.

We don't like throughbolt chairs, as the nuts on top seize up, and are impossible to re-use.

But 2807 love them, as they make fine boot scrapers, which they can sell to raise funds for our oldest GWR loco. 

 

 

 

Plenty of digging out saw an impressive 8 sleepers changed today, helped massively by the new electric tools

A sub section of the gang also ironed out some dips in the track, also with the (newish...) tools that we have, the Robel hand tampers. They make us so much more productive.

Seen at Winchcombe on Tuesday was this Incident Response Vehicle from Network Rail. Nothing to worry about though, readers, they were here for busines, to discuss some potential collaboration.

That's a good initiative, and welcome news.  

 

 

Getting too hot for work.

Thursday at Broadway.

A certain lack of materials - to wit, no more concrete blocks in store - forced John to lay bricks along the back on Thursday.

 

The concrete blocks ran out earlier in the week. How far John got, you can see here in the store room. The store room is also being insulated, people working in it won't be cold. It's getting a concrete block interior, as these are stronger for fixing things like shelves or light machinery.

On Thursday then John worked laying bricks along the back, in 29 degrees heat. He put down a row and a half, along the southern half of the rear. 

Under the green timetable on Thursday we had a diesel hauled train (the Peak), and a steam hauled one (35006).

It's getting very dry now, and this big loco set several small fires in the pine needles at Broadway. We put out two of them; the station staff another two. Last week we put out another one, by the signal box. The old MN does seem to leak sparks from somewhere.

 

 

 

Friday at Broadway.

31 degrees announced, and we had a delivery of materials coming too. This meant a lot of manual labour - oh-oh.

The lorry dropped off a pallet of concrete blocks, and another of Thermalite blocks. This was all on the pavement outside the station. No RRV until August, so we were obliged to shuttle this down one platform, over the barrow crossing, and back up the other. The lorry driver was kind enough to split the pallet of concrete blocks into three, so that were were able to ferry 18 at a time, using Neal's pallet truck (of course Neal has a pallet truck, don't you have one?)

The Therrmalite blocks were lighter, so could be split into only two loads, one of which you can see Neal and John pull along platform 1. In the meantime, Yours Truly ((later assisted by Neal and John) heaved the concrete blocks into the store room, one at a time. The total weight of the concretes was 1.3 tons ! 

By 10.30 we had everything over on P2, and stacked inside the building. By now however it was 29 degrees, and we retreated to a windier P1 and collapsed on to the benches. There wasn't much enthusiasm to stand in the sun and lay bricks after that.
 

 

 

Monday in the greenhouse.

The temperature has dropped a few degrees, phew! Neal and Yours Truly spent a day in the greenhouse. While the roof structure is, in essence, finished, there are quite a few little bits that need to be added to the structure. Various plates and angles are needed to allow the fascia boards to be attached to the trusses, and brackets on top of the trusses will allow the corrugated iron sheets and glass to be attached.

 

 

 

Today we had two visitors from the Broadway maintenance gang. How was it all going? Dave and Keith certainly looked impressed, and Neal was only too happy to explain all.

 

 

 

Neal spent the day drilling holes, while Yours Truly ground off millscale on the table visible bottom right. There's a big pile - a wheelbarrow load - of brackets that will go half way up and on top of the trusses, as Neal is demonstrating here. They all have a carefully measured angle, so that they will sit straight when fixed to the slope.

 

 

 

The big plates that Neal is attaching to the ends of the trusses here were cleaned last week, and are typical of the bits and bobs that still need to go on. Up to eight holes need to be drilled in items like these, and Neal reckons that he still has about 200 to drill. Bolts will secure the plates in the first instance, then every bolt will need to be replaced by a proper rivet.

 

 

 

It's amazing how Neal knows exactly what to do, what goes where, and which holes have to be drilled where.

We never see a drawing being consulted - it's all 'up there' ! 

 

 

 

 

 Another item worth mentioning from Monday is this loco on the unloading road:

 

It's BETTON GRANGE, about to go away (to the NNR, we ascertained.).

It's a busy locomotive, but of course the owning group needs to earn as much cash as possible now.  

 

 

Tuesday at Broadway.

The forecast was a bit dire - showers, and high winds. We decided to have a go! 

 

John would be working inside the store room, so to some degree sheltered from the wind and the rain.    

We did quite well really, despite the squalls.

Here is a mid morning shot, showing a row of concrete blocks going on.

The pile in the middle was from a delivery on Monday, but at the end of the day it was considerably diminished. Well done, that block layer!

 

 

During the day we were joined by members of the S&T department, who were working to permit the activation of the signal box. It's really happening, hard to believe after such a long wait.

In the picture they are easing the compensators, which after years of non-use, had become stiff and touching each other. 

 

 

The weather was still tolerable during the morning, but a burst of rain was forecast for 11 - 11.30, so we planned that period for our mid-morning coffee break. It's so nice to be able to drop into the Broadway cafe and enjoy a Cappuccino.  

Back at the waiting room, we see John laying more blocks, cut to size with a huge cloud of white dust by Your Truly. At the end of the day John had consumed three mixes, and laid two courses of blocks, with the associated insulation.

There is no news of our specials from the brickworks. 

 

We had two steamers during the day. Here's Foremarke Hall, about to steam into a stormy weather system, which completely obscured our normal clear view of Cleeve Hill down the line.

There followed a heavy downpour, which even overwhelmed the station's guttering and downpipe system.

 It was originally a 4 inch system, but we built it as a 3 inch one.

 

During the downpour (not so visible on these snapshots) the mid afternoon steam/diesel hauled train arrived, and quickly left, as no running round was required.

This time it was a pair of class 20s , which we recognised straight away from a distance, due to all the whistling that was going on. We haven't seen this combination yet at Broadway.

 

2807 was on behind. It was raining heavily here. At least they were facing forward, and could hide behind the backhead.

After the train left, it continued to belt down.

If you look carefully, you can see John, stoically laying down blocks, albeit somewhat sheltered by the rising walls of the store room.

Still, two courses of blocks by the end of the afternoon, that was certainly worth it.

 

 

Wednesday with the Usketeers.

Much better temperature - only 26 degrees. It made all the difference.

Today was a day about drainpipes. We installed the front one last week, but using temporary screws. 

Dave removed the modern screws, and fitted hex bolts in their place. The swan neck at the bottom still needs sorting.

 

The main job was at the back, where a broken downpipe led to a hole in the ground with an unknown, perhaps even blocked, destination.

It is extremely narrow round the back, and error made when the bit of land behind the weighbridge was sold off, and eventually turned into two houses. Damp is almost certainly building up in the narrow slot, and there isn't much we can do about it. The bottom of the slot is only just below the plinth, which is several rows too high.

Luckily the neighbours are friendly, and allowed us to work from their garden. We cut the old downpipe about halfway down (it is broken near the bottom), and on the left you can see Paul pulling through a new 6ft downpipe, which will run diagonally to the corner, and then round.

Here you can see Dave cleaning out the gutter (while we were there, why not?), and behind him you can see the new downpipe sloping diagonally to the corner.

So far, so good. But when we went to try out the next sections, we realiseed that we had failed to allow for crossing the plinth at the end of the new pipe system. A diagonal approach to that would look very awkward.

We had lunch, and chewed the fat.

After lunch the solution came to us, we would raise the point at which we intercepted the old downpipe, and reach the corner at a higher level. 

 

This picture now shows the amended situation, with the old downpipe made shorter, and the new 6ft length reaching the corner at a point about 2ft higher.

Mid afternoon we had tea and Magnums in the cafe, which was quite busy. The diesel hauled train, sadly, was not. The second train out was hauled by 2807 in black livery, and looked a lot busier.

This picture, taken from the garden, shows the final layout, after a lot of trial and error. We have even put the fencing panel back in, after sawing a small hole into it for our pipe to pass through.

 

 

 

 

The last picture shows how far we got with the rear guttering layout - to the corner, and properly secured to the wall.

Now we have to buy some additional pipes and fittings, including another swan neck to get over the plinth below. With a bit of luck it will arrive before next time -  watch this space.

 

 

 

 

 

PWay notes for Wednesday 

A repeat visit to Gotherington, where some of the job of replacing flat bottom rail sleepers still remained to be done 

 

 

Although the day started cool enough, as soon as the sun came out it becme very hot, and this hit productivity.

The interesting news item of the day was the first time use of the Milwaukee electric chair screw wrench.

Before we bought this, our weapon was the motor powered impact wrench. This suffered frequent breakdowns, and when operational, was extremely heavy to carry and operate, and also required you to bend half way over, a poor attitude for the back.

The new electric wrench is not only surprisingly light, it is tall, so that you can use it standing up, without bending. With its two handles at the top it looks like a pogo stick, so that's what we call it... 

 

We liked it, sure enough! 

 

 

 

 

An extract from:

THE GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY (LONDON) LECTURE AND DEBATING SOCIETY.

 

Yes, there was such a thing! 

One item in a 1926 pamphlet that came across our desk was this one, which you might find interesting:

Anti-Aircraft gun damaged.

 

An unusual accident arising from unusual circumstances led to the disaster you see depicted. This is an anti-aircraft gun on a road motor lorry loaded on a ''Loriot'' despatched with others from South Lambeth to Watchet for Territorial manoeuvres.

The barrel, which normally pointed in the opposite direction to that shewn in the photograph, was intended to have been kept horizontal, first by a locking pin in the elevating apparatus, and secondly by a wire lashing around the muzzle, securing that end of the barrel in a metal crutch by attachment to the floor of the lorry.

On loading, these safeguards were assumed to have been taken because the gun was covered with a War Department sheet, but the pin had not been inserted, and the wire lashing and crutch had not been properly fastened.

The barrel became elevated during the journey, and on the train passing under Milley overbridge at Twyford, the gun rammed the bridge. The effect will be seen to have been quite bad for the gun.

 

Was that a bang I just heard, Fred? Nah, pass me my mash tin, will yer Mikey?