Blues all complete.

Thursday at Broadway.

Good weather, and lots of happy customers over on P1 at Broadway. That's what we like to see.

We did a quick trip to Toddington to pick up some bits. It also gave us the opportunity to see how Neal had been doing with the trusses.

The answer is that they have had all their rivets fitted now (background). The next stage is to fit the diagonals. The angles, cut to size, are in the foreground. Now they need to have a kink added to them, about 12 ins from the end, then they can be fitted.

The rebuild of the lost third chimney on the station building is progressing, albeit slowly.

The main body of the chimney, in reds borrowed from Broadway, is now clearly visible. Now comes the decorative bit.

 

 

In the station itself we had the 7 coach steamer about to head south, hauled by 3850. At the same time there is a DMU departure from P2 for Broadway. It is now clear to us why this run always has very few passengers - with a choice of steam or diesel both in the station at the same time, people vote with their hearts.

We also overheard a strange question, while both trains were in the station.

Passenger, standing by a Mk 1 : 'Is this train electric, and is that one over there diesel?'

Now, some might take this level of knowledge of our trains to prove that we need only pay scant attention to authenticity (Former chairman: 'People don't look up...') but our role is that of a living museum. So we must educate - show people exactly what it was like, precisely because they don't know.

Over in the old garden centre site more concrete sleepers have arrived from Bicester. We now have 7 stacks of 50 - 350 sleepers in total. That's an excellent total for a winter relay, plus the rail that goes with them, which came earlier.

Back at Broadway John completed laying the last of the blue plinth headers. That's it for the base of the building.

Now we can continue with the reds for the main body of it.

Here's the corner from last week. Taken down again, and rebuilt in English bond.

English bond means courses of headers, which in our case means half bricks.

We started the slow and dusty process of cutting the reds in half, to give John something to work with.

Neal came to build the second temporary door frame. This will allow us to keep laying reds, while we sort out the manufacture by a joiner of the door frames, doors and windows to GWR designs. Luckily we have plenty of evidence from our only original station, still standing after 120 years, at Toddington.

Neal helped with stacking supplies of complete bricks. As these have stood waiting outdoors since the P1 build was finished in 2017, they are either a bit dirty, or green with mould, or both, so need cleaning individually before stacking.

During the day, which was quite busy at Broadway (21 passengers on the DMU after lunch, which is unusually high) we also had 3850 come by.

The number on the buffer beam appears to have been a sticker, as the '8' is peeling off.

Where is Alex, when you need him?

By the end of the day John had made himself several towers, from which to work next time. Laying the reds is more interesting, as you now have to calculate in the specials, which here form rounded corners. Note the brick centre right, which transforms a bullnosed red corner into a right angled plinth underneath. Very elegant.

Our passengers mostly didn't know this, but they love it when they see it. That is what being a living museum is all about.

Talking about living museum, we'd like some indoor GWR benches, upholstered like this one.

These could go inside the new waiting room, down the side, and help make it a function room. The trouble is, we have never been offered one yet. We've had a couple of donated all wooden ones, which would go outside, under the canopy. (one is just visible on the right). But never an indoor one with a padded seat. They are made of pitch pine and Rexine.

One is currently on Ebay at £1200, which is beyond our means, and the joiner we visited on Friday for our doors & windows quoted £1800 +VAT  to make one. That's even further out of reach.

Can anyone help?

Saturday, out with the gang

A big gang of 12, it must be the fine weather that brings us out.

Driving Miss Daisy...

We packed them into the Ranger, three more in the tipper truck, and the rest had to go by private car - to Cheltenham Race Course signal box, where 4 wooden sleepers were life expired.

No warning boards needed here, we were right under the signalman, who watched the goings on with interest. There isn't much to do between trains.

The first thing was, of course, digging out the old ones. They were made of wood, as shorter ones are required when opposite a track centre drain, such as here.

These tracks here were laid at the end of 1999, faster and faster after Southam lane, as the head of the Friends of CRC had offered the gang a bottle of champagne if they connected his station before the year end. 

They made it, just.

We had to stop digging when the train arrived, so that was the opportunity for a coffee and some of the doughnuts left over after the briefing.

We had brought 4 replacement sleepers with us (second hand, they last longer than new) but they needed plugging as our base plates did not match their holes.

Simon is cutting off the plugs that are still sticking out here.

After three of the sleepers had been pulled into their spaces, David drilled new holes for their base plates.

You can see him here, accompanied by a little cloud of two stroke smoke.

Another sleeper to be done was on the platform road, opposite.

This one was very heavy, as it was a re-purposed crossing timber, and its weight was further added to by the water it had soaked up overnight from the heavy rain.

We got all 4 old sleepers up on the deck of the tipper. This is a slightly smaller vehicle than the new blue van with the tail lift, but it actually has a much higher carrying capacity - 1100kg, as against a net of 645Kg for the blue Transit, with its heavy tail lift (that comes off its own carrying capacity)

As we were screwing down the fourth sleeper, the rest of the gang started a second job on the other side of the crossing, where a number of dipped jhoints had been diagnosed. These were lifted an packed.

Then off back to Winchcombe, for a 4 o'clock tea.

Monday at Broadway.

Two of us on site, a brickie and his mate...

Neal went to Toddington, to drill holes. More major surgery on the 4 trusses has had to be suspended as 3850 ran a hot box and needed to make use of the lifting jacks - just where the trusses were located. Such is life, in railway preservation we all have to collaborate, so Neal spent some time moving all the steels to somewhere else in the shed.

 

During the morning John laid this row of half reds along the front.

Spot the deliberate mistake - the Broadway maintenance gang certainly did from the other side of the tracks, but that first brick on the second course should have been a corner, part of a column alongside the door.

It was soon sorted, as the mortar was still damp - see below.

 

John is also building various towers, and this is one on the corner of the store room.

This corner will have bullnoses on it, a lovely architectural feature.

After lunch John put down the second course, and at the same time rectified the errant brick by the door, replacing it with the base of a column. These architectural bricks are handed, so you have to be careful with which one you take.

Mid afternoon it was time to point the work. Slowly the store room on the end is rising up from the plinth.

Yours truly cut a whole lot of stretchers in half, to make them headers. This will be a regular job, as every other course is made of headers, so loads and loads need to be cut.

Cleaning bricks is also producing results - look at all these blues and reds, rescued from the demolition site and cleaned up. They could be used in the proposed Toddington platform extensions for example.

Tuesday at Broadway.

We're making good use of the dry weather this week. There will be three days on site, and this was the second.

 

The day didn't start well. The (electric) mixer turned 5 or 6 times, then stopped. Now the mixer often refuses to start, due to an electrical issue (- if we have this right -) where we press the start button at the wrong part of the electric AC cycle and the fuse goes. That means having to get the office keys out, and resetting the trip. All very time consuming, with a lot of legwork up and down the platform.

But this time there was current, but it stopped. Now what?

Call doctor Neal !

Fortunately Dr. Neal was on call, and duly arrived just as an ambulance went by, with its siren on. It seemed to announce his presence...

A loose wire in the plug was diagnosed, and we soon had the mixer humming again. Not before making John a manual mix (to get him started) which was quite hard work, stirring round that barrow with a shovel.

Tuesday was a blue timetable, so we had the visit of the class 117 DMU.

This is its last week in service with us, so grab a trip now, if you want one. It's leaving some time next month, but the last run will be during next weekend's gala. The exhaust note, as the revs mount, is quite striking, a sort of loud chattering. Is that normal?

The booking office is getting increasingly crowded with sundry small notices peppered about, which detract from the 'living museum' atmosphere that we try to create. Three notices about dogs, three about cash and cards, taxi ads, plastic snap frames, and one about no aardvaarks allowed on the train. 

A replica GWR poster of Cheltenham has a modern advertisement pinned over the top of it. There is, sadly, no control.

On the big poster board is an explanatory A4, which at least gives a brief resume of what we are up to on the other side.

In fact the most popular items at our 1904 station are the replica posters. We often see people taking photographs of them. They ask if the posters are available for sale, and the answer to that is no. You can buy them on line, as we did.

 

We've had some housekeeping tasks on our project. One was to visit a joinery, to get a quote for the doors and windows. Sadly our preferred joiner decided to retire.

We also need a number of special bricks, as we don't have all of the ones we need. We are also a cill short, and one is a bit chipped. It's been hanging around for almost 10 years after all.

They've absorbed some dirt too, and Neal here is trying to clean them (without success).

On the reds John is doing quite well, with this corner up to the fifth course already. But other corners have zero courses, so there's plenty still to do.

During Tuesday John laid the third course left of the door, and that is the course for the window cills - hence Neal's interest in cleaning them.

Additionally a first course was laid up to the middle of the front.

Blast from the past.

Picture by Paul Fuller.

23 years ago, and the GWSR reached the southern end of the line in Hunting Butts tunnel*.

This was the opportunity for a PWay gang photograph:

On the loco:

Keith Kendall, Mike Townsend, John Lees.

On the ground:

Charles Martin, Nigel Black, Ian Purkess, Pete Regan, Unknown, Clive Hawkins, Dave French, Stevie Warren.

 

Where are they now... (one is still in the gang today!)

* The trackbed in our ownership goes on another 3/4 mile, to just short of the Prince of Wales Stadium, but this is currently unused (and seems likely to remain so, due to various issues)

A start on the reds

Friday at Broadway.

A lovely sunny day, and more blues got laid. 

We're on the final row of blue plinth bricks now, all the way across the front. The sunny weather made this an excellent day for laying bricks.

Over on P1 Ben and Neal were installing (for the second time, the first time the hands ran at unequal speeds) the station clock. At the end of the day it ran correctly - result !

Yours truly spent the day on sorting and crushing bricks. There is a vast pile under the stairs, so it will keep us happily occupied for weeks to come. From the detritus we have already filled one pallet with cleaned and recycled bricks, originally in the P2 waiting room, or built into one of the platforms that were demolished in 1963.

 

We suddenly realised that among the bricks and stones was one with letters on it - this one. It says 'B III'. The top is flat, with a slight slope to one side and a drip strip underneath.

Neal diagnosed this as coming from the top edge of the Gents toilet, where a stone cap sealed off the brickwork at the top. It must have been part of a kit.

 

 

At lunch time we ate our sandwiches in the signal box, accompanied by George from S&T.

There was a Gold Fire & Drive train today, and you see George here watching P&O trundle into Broadway with  the (almost) empty coaches, but one happy driver.

George showed us how the future Broadway signalman could see where the incoming train was, and he lit up the display for us. There was a buzzer too, which the train activated a bit south of the Childswickham bridge.

P&O then ran round its treain.

This was the view from inside Broadway signal box, as the big Pacific ran round. Photography is miraculous - you can't see the thick spider's webs.

Maybe next year?

At the end of the day John had laid 71 blue plinths. He was over half way down, so one more day should sort that. We, in the meantime, started stacking reds at the back, so all is ready for the big transit from one colour to the next.

At the end of the day there was an interesting conversation with a visitor from Warwick, who was a builder, starting to wind down from his business, and looking for something else to do. We sang the GWSR's praises, so here's hoping that it leads to a new recruit.

Meanwhile, 30 lengths of 98lb and 113lb FB rail has arrived from Bicester, on top of the sleepers (in the corner) already delivered. A second load of concrete sleepers is still pending.

Excellent work by our PWay manager, who arranged this for us at little or no cost.

Saturday, out with the gang.

Prescott today, a lovely part of the countryside.

This view is at Middle Stanley. It's a complex of holiday cottages, with a smashing view - our railway! But it's certainly very charming.

We let the first train through, just as the early morning rain was clearing. Here's P&O, heading for Cheltenham at 10am.

After the first train was through we set out our work boards, and met up with the rest of the team, and David, recently qualified, in the Telehandler.

This was needed to pull out a defective concrete sleeper, one of several earmarked along this stretch. They look to have had their various faults for a long time, probably since they were laid in the 1990s.

While Nick clears the last of the ballast out of the crib, David in the Telehandler pulls out the defective sleeper.

By this time the second train was due, now headed by newly restored 3850.

This is the defective sleeper. It's missing one of its hoops, but seems to have been laid anyway, in the rush to the south.

Dave, still with us today, was on the team that day, but remembers 'nothing'. Very wise.

After the replacement sleeper had been inserted by the Telehandler, the defective one was dropped on to our new Transit.

After some calculations, we discovered that because of its Palfinger tail lift (meaning extra weight) the net loading capacity of this truck is very modest, only around 645 Kg. That means after its crew and their equipment, it can only carry one sleeper back to base. Not really enough for our gang.

Some of the SHC clips in this area seemed very loose. A newer, stiffer clip did not help, so our suspicions moved on to the pad that was underneath.

This was it - a thin, ruined bit of pad that looked nothing like the new ones we use today. It resembled an offcut of carpet tile.

We put a new pad underneath, and after that the SHC clip went in tight, as it should.

In view of the clement weather we ate al fresco on the Prescott Road bridge. A train came by at a snail's pace as we sat there, having been slowed by our advance site board, but we weren't working. Sorry !

 

 

We weren't really geared up to change a lot of pads on Saturday, and anyway that job wasn't on our list. So we did what we could with the handful of pads that we happened to have with us.

More work is needed here.

One job that was on our list was to deal with a sleeper with a bent hoop, so no SHC clip was fitted. These hoops often get bent during transport and stacking.

We tried to bend the hoop back, with our two 'most muscular' team members on the ends of two bars, but without success.

The next idea will be to heat it up with an oxy-acetylene set, and try again. It would be a shame to waste the sleeper otherwise.

The passage of trains, and some surface evidence told us that some sleepers were pumping, so we had a go at that too, with all 4 machines:

Little Freddie

Big Al

Bill, and 

Ben

And then we found two hats along the line, but soaking wet, and possibly there for some time now.

If you recognise one of these as yours, let us know - Dave has them.

And don't look out of the open window with a hat on. That's our advice.

Andy's stock of rail end cut offs has shrunk, after his successful sales of quite a few now. People use them as anvils, or door stops etc. We still have more to sell, and may even add to the stock, with future cut and shut operations. You can buy one from the Cafe at Todington, or via our PWay group. We can accommodate different length requirements, with a bit of notice. One chap wanted to make a table out of 4 bits - we were happy to help. It brings in vital shekels for our tool fund.

Tuesday at Broadway.

The end of the plinths? Not quite. Just part of the front left to do, after a damp day on Tuesday.

Twentyfive blue plinth headers laid on Tuesday, about 20 remain to be done.

News has come in that the GWSR DMU group have indeed sold their working 3 car set L425, to the Bo'ness and Kinneil Railway. It's going to leave in November.

Currently set L425 is still running services for us. Here it is entering Broadway on Tuesday, so take a last look. Or even travel on it one last time. It'll run on the blue timetable until the Autumn gala.

On the P1 build we had a little milestone too - John laid the first red brick, by the door to the future store room (ex GENTS).

The ample blue plastic sheeting is there to protect the 6 courses of blues from mortar dropping down. It will be pulled away when the top course of reds goes on.

While John and Bob, both of whom laid many of the bricks on the P1 building, discuss the start of the red brick section, the class 117 prepares to reverse back out of the station.

The SRPS have posted a video of their acquisition of the class 117 from the GWSR DMU group. The set is of course privately owned, as is all motive power on the GWSR.

https://youtu.be/dg9cWYl6lCE?si=g-RdKS3zR70TUjsw

We await with interest news of how the DMU slot in our blue timetable will be filled next season. The same owner group also has a class 122 'Bubble Car', which would be an interesting alternative, but at the time of writing its restoration wasn't completely finished yet. DMU 51372 was also sold, as a source of spare parts.

As we are now definitely within the autumn period, steam heating is being used. You can just see it leaking ourt from under this carriage.

Having laid 25 of the front plinths remaining to be done (the rest will be done next time), John turned his skills to the end wall of the future store room.

The first course was stretchers, so with English bond the next course should be?

Neal and yours truly debated on how to break the news to him gently.

At the end of the day John had duly taken down again all but the first course, and started again. We aim to get things historically correct.

Always a pleasure is the passing of the light engine running round, here in the form of newly restored 3850. We often get a toot (little wisp of steam by the bridge) or a friendly wave from the footplate crew.

A few moments later 3850 was back at the head of the train, and ready to leave. Now is the time to put some of that coal on the fire...

 

We were amused to discover a small toy left on the pile of blocks for us, presumably to inspire us as to the shape of the new waiting room.

It's going to be better than that !

Later in the day Neal came to help us out.

Here he has brought a barrow load of half bricks. As we are laying to the English bond, rows should alternate between headers and stretchers. As the outside wall is only one brick wide (to allow for a cavity inside for insulation purposes, which the original building did not have) the header course has to be in half bricks, which we cut on site.

In the background John is rebuilding the three courses he initially built all in stretchers...