Clippathon - the final !

Saturday

Asset recovery exercise, part two. Very motivating, but we still can't go into detail of what and where, don't want any pirates on the horizon. The next trip is in 10 days, after that perhaps we can say something more about it.

Monday at Broadway

Lots of gardening, as there will be test trains prior to the resumption of (limited) services from August 15th. We want Broadway to look its best.

One new item was the construction of this second little low wall in imperial blues in front of the corner lamp post, which like the middle one, was put in too high.

When the mortar has gone off we will back fill it, and perhaps rearrange the Cotswold stones a bit to take the harshness off those concrete blocks (which we did not put there....)

An important part of the Broadway kit is this socket-set-with-Hobnobs.

There were complaints that they were not chocolate Hobnobs, but problem solved, Brian has found a packet of blue chocolate ones in the corner! He is about to appropriate that packet.

In one of the containers the Paxford bench was being stripped of its flaky paint. That is a long job, but can be done off and on between other stuff. The side visible here is nearly done, then we need to fill in the graffiti and sand that over.

An inspection committee, having tested the Hobnobs, has arrived to make sure the job here was in proper hands. Not theirs, obviously, no, they are just inspectors...

Tuesday at Peasebrook

The supermegaclippathon was so mega that worries rose that we might not finish it by Wednesday close of business. Thursday and Friday would be too hot (rail expansion too great) and Saturday would be too late, so we really needed to finish it on Wednesday.

A call went out for an extra day's work, and 4 volunteers came out and spent Tuesday just beyond Peasebrook readying (the slowest part) and then clipping up several more panels.

This effort really broke the back of the problem, and Wednesday's clippathon day now stood a good chance of completing the job.

A careful eye was kept on the temperature of the rail, with this special magnetic thermometer.

If the rail was too cold, we couldn't clip it up.

Strangely enough, the temperature of the steel rail exceeds the temperature of the surrounding air by quite a few degrees by the end of the day, so in the afternoon we could clip to our heart's content.

Wednesday at Peasebrook.

The full gang came out, this was the do or die day, all the clips had to be back in, reluctant rail or not. There were 14 of us.

It might have been an important day, but you can't start it without munching some good doughnuts.

What do you think of these, Rob?

'These are Tesco's, they're not as good as Morrison's...'

'I might need another one to be sure though....'

After spending Tuesday largely on his knees and in shorts, Dave came out today with the answer to his sore knees - gardener's knee pads!

The elastic had gone a bit, but they worked. He was happy poking out the plastics and bits of ballast under the rails all day long.

We found the place where we left off yesterday (it all looks pretty much the same) and Paul volunteered to work the rail lifters, which need a man with a lot of muscle and, erm, some weight. Paul felt that he fitted the picture. You place the lifter over a rail, and then press the handle down through 90 degrees. That's the tricky bit where the weight comes in, because if you are unlucky (or somewhat thin) the lifter takes over and has a mind of its own. You could end up in the bushes.

Once the rail was up the preparation gang got going, and on its hands and knees fiddled out all the bits of ballast, dust, plastics and pads sticking like limpets to the underside of the rail.

A bit like the road to Compostelle, it's crawling on your knees for a very long way.

After the preparation gang came the actual clipper-uppers, here in two groups, once the rail temperature had reached an acceptable high.

About lunch time we reached a great high, as the preparation gang reached the end of our ordeal, being the northern breather near Pry Lane. Here it is, with the rail back in place although not yet clipped up, and the heavy and awkward rail lifter (like a 40lb pair of scissors) tossed gladly into the four foot.

Phew! Just clipping up to follow.

Yes, but...

The breather had been loosened to allow the rail (about 3 miles long) to expand naturally, so at the end of the job we needed to tighten it up again.

Here's Martin, watched by new recruit Andrew, using the 'Animal' on the nuts. It turned out that we were using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, as those nuts shouldn't be very tight at all.

Oh well, you learn something new every day.

After that we looked up the line,

...and down again, it was looking pretty good, we had come to the end of the Supermegaclippathon in three working days, during which we clipped up somewhere between half and a mile of track.

It felt like 10 miles, who cares what the actual length was.

Another small facet of what we did was to deal with the effects of the expansion of the rail. You can see it in this picture, the rail has expanded towards the left, taking the pad that has glued itself to the underside with it, so that we can see that there has been about 3 inches of expansion.

So we had to prise off each limpet like pad, and seat it again properly between the lugs on the sleeper. This phenomenon was only observed at one end though.

The same creep was evident in two places where the welded joint, normally between two sleepers, had moved right up to the lug on the sleeper, so making it impossible to do up. This was initially marked with yellow paint.

So just when we thought we could go home, we had to dig out and move 4 sleepers sideways a few inches, two in each case.

Here is Rob levering away at one of the sleepers, which, naturally, is reluctant to move.

The second and principal sleeper was then moved as well, and it was this manoeuvre which freed up the lug, as the weld was gradually moved away.

You can see that by moving the sleeper the yellow stripes are no longer in line.

So, end of the day - all clipped up, and ready to roll. Bring on the trains loaded with happy punters (we hope)

Bratton Fleming

Just a little update. As a shareholder we received a letter from EA to say that they are in the 'under offer' stage and the paperwork is now being sorted out. Satisfactory searches have been carried out, but nothing is signed yet so we remain at risk to a last minute counter offer. Fingers crossed therefore! There is now a good dialogue with the vendors, and the EA negotiators have been praised for their professionalism. It will be several weeks yet though before we have certainty.

An idea that has been floated is to have some sort of reception on site for the donors, once the dust has settled. That would be a wonderful idea. Then we can see what we have achieved, and talk to EA about their future plans.

Amazon Smile

A reminder that if you buy through Amazon, make sure it is through 'Amazon Smile' and nominate the GWR Trust as your chosen charity. The two Amazons are identical, and the funds generated for our trust cost you nothing. You can do it through your desktop, or your smartphone. A neat little summary appears on top of your summary page which tells you how much you have already generated.

Your blogger has generated £5.67 so far, from 39 purchases.

Amazon Smile so far donated £3.700.000 to all the charities nominated, so we're talking millions of pounds here.

However....

The GWR Trust has so far received £50.86 as of May 2020. Roughly speaking therefore only 10 people are using Amazon Smile and have nominated the GWRT as their charity. We have 4000 members, so if they all signed up instead of just 10, think how much better the trust would be off, at no cost to the buyer.

Food for thought. Go on - it costs you nothing! You can sign up here:

https://smile.amazon.co.uk/