Lockdown V.2. looms

Saturday on the PWay 

Saturday's job was to complete the relaying of the unloading road at Toddington. Somewhat surprisingly the majority of gang members did not volunteer that morning.  With just a track walker, a PIC (Person in Charge) and one worker the job could not be progressed, and the day's work was cancelled. Our chirpy contractor Stevie was sent home. No doughnuts and no work!

Trains still ran of course, and quite well filled it looked, so and alternative emploi was found for the worker, which was to pick up the track walker on completion of his Winchcombe - Gotherington inspection walk.

The weather started very windy and rainy this morning, and luckily our passengers were all safely indoors in steam heated carriages, as the first train of the day, headed by 4270, made its way south along the tall embankment after Gretton Halt.

An hour later 4270 returned, this time chimney first. We see it here at Gotherington Manor Lane, where the track worker was met, windswept and wet. The warm car ride back to Winchcombe was very welcome.

Tuesday on the Broadway canopy fabrication

Last week the team completed the manufacture of the angles for the unloading road, so this week we were free again to resume fabricating the remaining bits of the canopy due to be completed at Broadway.

This bracket, actually a pair of brackets back to back, now has a pair of braces bolted to it.

It was being readied for painting in grey primer. Eventually the bolts will be removed and replaced with rivets.

A new job was started on Tuesday, which was the fabrication of the decorative slabs at the bottom of the uprights. They will be made out of this length of plate.

We did not find it practical to have new uprights cast (the Henley in Arden ones are in store, but are too short) and our replica uprights will be made of box section steel, with slabs welded to the bottom to replicate the shape of the original castings.

First the plate was cut into four sections....

Job done.... four sections ready, now waiting to be cut into two each.

The job of cutting each section into two unequal pairs.

Why of unequal width? This puzzled us too, but not Neal, he has it all in his head.

Two narrower sections will each fit between two wider ones, thus creating a box like this.

This box will be fitted around the uprights to simulate a change in the size of the casting.

Having made the two boxes, we tuned our fabrication efforts towards the manufacture of short sections of beading. As we don't have any beading, but we do have round bar, we cut off 4 sections of bar and then sawed each one in half, lengthwise.

Two sections of round bar cut to length.

The pieces of bar were tack welded onto some scrap bits of channel, and those were then clamped on to the saw.

Sawing then commenced.... would they all be of the same width? We held our breath, as the saw went round and round.

At the end of the afternoon we had converted 4 lengths of round bar into 8 lengths of moulding. Four of them were indeed very slightly smaller than the other 4 but no matter, we will group them into two sets of four, so you won't be able to see any difference.

In the background are the 8 plates that we cut earlier in the day, and these with the half rounds will make up the lower half of the uprights, to look like original cast iron columns.

More pictures from Verney Junction

Derek Palmer, a reader of this blog, has very kindly sent us some photographs he took in 1963 of Buckingham and Verney Junction stations. He has given permission to show them on the blog, although note that Derek retains the copyright.

M79900 at Buckingham on 5th June 1963.

Buckingham station has since been demolished. The platform edges are still visible, with a footpath in between.

The DMU driver hands the token for the Buckingham section back to the Verney Junction signalman.

As the signalbox rodding all points backwards, one assumes that there was a second signalbox where the route to Aylesbury veered off in the distance.

Note also the footbridge, from which the next picture was taken.

42105 at Verney Junction, 14th September 1963.

Derek's pictures are really super, and we will see some more of them in future blogs. In the picture above you can see the Aylesbury line, unused, curving away to the right. On the platform you can see a strange white bird-like statue, which is also visible in the B&W picture last week.

And then some up to date ones of the situation today, with demolition in progress (with thanks to Jim for the pictures):

 

Verney Junction:

Here demolition started as forecast, pretty much the first working day after our second and last go at brick retrieval.

 

Here the 360 is attacking the westbound platform, at the level crossing end, near where the bird statue stood.

Before you say, why can't you take those bricks: Our experience is that if you accept demolition rubble, this is what you get. Few of the bricks are intact, only broken ones are loose, and the good ones are surrounded by broken ones glued to them. It just doesn't work.

Here is what we salvaged on the last day, after the Transits were full.

We may have a delivery of these on Wednesday, thanks to the donor making a bit of free transport come our way.

The westbound platform is no more. On the right was a third platform face, which was for the Aylesbury trains from Buckingham.

Swanbourne.

Here too demolition has been total, and when you swish through here on your modern train you will never realise that there was ever a station here, with a booking office and a stationmaster's house.

The site of the stationmaster's house.

This is the site of the two platforms, and the source of our 800 bull nosed bricks with the diamond pattern. We swooped just in time!

Wednesday on the Usk platform.

A cold, crisp but very sunny day. Good brick laying conditions, and we had two teams on the job along the platforms.

 

The day started alarmingly as several large patches of red were discovered on the roadway by the signal box.

Blood? Some awful injury? An accident?

Fear not, the patches were discovered to be doughnut jam. Once again someone didn't hold his doughnut properly, and the sticky stuff dribbled down his jacket and all over the road. Tsk!

 

Two teams today then. The first was a contingent from our Construction and Maintenance group, who decided to finish off building up the end wall around the stop block.

Bob, in the morning mist.

The second group was our usual Usk gang, and for our part we decided to finish off the return around the northern end. Just Paul and yours truly to start with....

.... as Dave and John decided to locate to the pile of bricks from Verney Junction, to start cleaning them up for further use.

To our happy surprise, the team from C&M came over to collect several barrow loads of freshly cleaned Verney bricks.

That is quick! Last week in a wall in Buckinghamshire, this week already in a wall in Gloucestershire.

We don't hang around here.

 

The main reason Dave put himself on brick cleaning was to be near the yard gate, as a delivery of bricks from Verney Junction was expected. Eventually a Transit and a pickup with a trailer arrived, bringing us 5 of the expected 8 pallets. 

Hence there are 3 more pallets still to bring, as well as a promised supply of roof slates and ridge tiles, set aside for us at Swanbourne.

We didn't have the company Telehandler to hand (it was busy on the unloading road at Toddington) so had to borrow one from a neighbour. On top of that the trailer that came was found to have a flat tire and had to be unloaded from where it stood. But nonetheless we got everything off, and safely stored.

By lunch time Paul had gone right round the end of the platform wall. The hole at the top will be covered by more bull noses, to make the end neat. The afternoon was spent pointing the work.

As it was a sunny day, we decided to have our lunch break sitting on the trolley, and we actually got quite warm, in this idyllic spot.

Chief bricklayer Bob from C&M at the other end was making a jolly good job of the end wall too. He decided to limit the brick laying to three rows, any more being difficult to keep straight as the bricks are very heavy and they would squash the mortar on the lowest row.

 

 

Meanwhile, after the brick unloading Dave was about to return the Telehandler to the neighbour when a lorry loaded with huge boxes arrived.

These were presents for Santa, so we can't say what was in them...

There was a large number of elves in civvies to unwrap the big black plastic parcels, and retrieve the individual boxes of presents within. These were all taken to the grotto at the North Pole.

Our Santa Specials this year are definitely on, during the month of December, immediately after the current lockdown. Check our website if you want to treat the kids.

After lunch Bob built up the corners, and the pointed his work for the day.

Yours truly had a couple of errands to run, the first one being at Toddington in the yard, where this morning's gang was busy putting in the last two rails on the unloading road.

Only one more rail remains to be laid in the picture, taken mid afternoon.

 

 

But this time of year the sun drops over the horizon quickly, leading to some strong colours as the evening nears.

The yard was busy today, and principally with diesels being shunted about.

Here is an all-diesel picture of the activities, taken just before the sun dropped beneath the horizon.

Then a last stop at Broadway to drop some kit off.

 

 

Thanks to Terry for the photograph, you can see that the Broadway gang made another great leap forward with the P2 spearhead fencing. They placed 3 panels at the southern end, leaving room for a gate, and 5 panels to the north, marching off to the site of the future P2 building.

A great effort!

 

 

Due to the lockdown there will be no further Heritage activities, as these are 'non-essential' and only essential maintenance is permitted by the lockdown regulations. However, regular postings of the blog will continue, and we should have a story to tell each time, so don't forget to tune in on Wednesdays.

Bratton Fleming

Great news from Exmoor Associates about Bratton Fleming! The little station is finally saved definitely, after a wait of 6 months. Contracts were exchanged on November 2nd, and the ever present risk of gazumping is now over at last. The delay was caused by an onward purchase by the vendor falling through, COVID staffing problems with local government and finally so much local property activity that the solicitor being used had to resort to refusing further conveyancing!

So the little station is saved. Another piece of good news is that a regular tenant has been found who is willing to rent the premises to live in for several years. This will guarantee an income stream, although in the first instance more money needs to be spent on a full rewire to make the premises safe for the new tenant.

What next? Well, EA are always on the lookout for other pieces of trackbed that come up, so it's a waiting game. Keep your eyes on their website, as sometimes they need help.

A last question:

One of our volunteers, who just happens to have the initials 'BRW', is keen to acquire a set of these bench ends. You don't often see these BR Western Region examples, copies of the GWR roundel bench ends. We can't imagine why BR went to the trouble of casting these specially, as there must have been many redundant GWR bench ends around, with all the station closures. But they did, so occasionally you run into them.

Sometimes the bench ends are even mixed up, such as this one at.... shall we let you guess where?

The scripted bench end is on the left, the GWR roundel one is on the right. What a mixture!

 

 

Anyway, should you have a bench or ends with BR (W) on them and are interested in selling, get in touch with breva2011 at hotmail.co.uk, and you could make a volunteer on the GWSR very happy!

We wish you a merry lockdown, let's show some solidarity to beat back the virus, and see you in a month.