Jab-Jab

Thursday at Toddington, and in a surgery

Back on the unloading road, the end of which has to come down 20mm. It's not much, but the effort is huge. We had to dig it out from underneath.

A mini digger came in to dig out the last section of the final third of the unloading road. At this point it rises 5ins to meet the level of the car park, while respecting the floor level of the future loco shed extension, sketched in on the left.

After digging down the side, the mini digger scooped out the gaps between the sleepers. Tricky on Thursday, as the ground was frozen solid. It hacked and hacked, until finally some slabs of frozen type 1 came loose.

In the background the laser level is in use to determine where the track is relative to where it should be.

In true mini digger fashion two conduits and a water pipe were breached. We breached 4 of them at Broadway one day!

 

This fishplate joint was exposed. The joint is not exactly flush, but in defence of its builders, it is what was there before, and the track here being built entirely out of reclaimed material, what we have here is a transition from 00 type rail ('ought-ought') to 95lb, the latter having a much thinner head. For that you need a special fishplate, expensive to buy.

 

 

Yours truly then left mid afternoon for  - his covid jab! At last.... There's another to follow in 12 weeks. It all looked rather well organised, give the NHS credit where it's due.

The next day was a less happy one, with a feverish side effect that lasted all day. This was from the Astra-Zeneca vaccine. Mrs. Blogger was done a week earlier, and she got Pfizer. Her after effects were different - a painful arm, and very sleepy in the evening, but no fever the next day.

Monday.

Warmer at last, and being the best of the next several days, we thought we'd put in a day's work to dig out the batons in the area already concreted, and start packing the lowered track.

The wooden batons were inserted into the flange grooves in the newly poured concrete. Once the concrete had gone off, all we had to do was to pull them out. But they would not be pulled. Even a crowbar and a short fulcrum wouldn't do the trick.

After much hammering and splintering we had to resort to a circular saw to cut a slot down the middle, to relieve the pressure from the sides.

One way or another we eventually got them all out, after two earlier days of failure. The splintered remains in the foreground told the story. The battens were once 8ft long...

During lunch John mentioned that his screen wash pump had given up the ghost.

Did you hear a squeak?

We popped the bonnet, and who was more surprised - Neal and John, or the two mice that scampered away! They had built a nest of leaves in the fuse box, and during the boring winter months had chewed on the insulation of some of the wires.

After lunch we started packing the panel of the unloading road that we had dropped.

Strange to say, but the loco department has a PWay Kango, so we used it, as it was intended. 

Next is a visit from a heavy loco over this panel, to see what happens. Something tells us: More packing!

Wednesday - Essential fishplate greasing

Having now grasped the essentials of the new Interflon process, we have been out twice in the last week to get on with doing the whole line, before trains start to run again.

 

 

Today a gang of 6 started from mile post 11 1/2 (which is on the Defford Straight between Winchcombe and Hayles Abbey halt) and worked their was northwards towards Toddington.

 

We had a little self propelled trolley out to transport our stores and any heavier items.

At least we think the PermaQuip was self propelled (it must be a new model, we hadn't seen this option before) as it suddenly shot off on its own to the next fishplate.

Handy.

 

 

 

 

 

We did a mile of track today, adding to the mile done previously. That took us to mile post 10 1/2 (from Honeybourne of course, not Broadway)

We had our lunch in a handy PWay shelter that we found along the way. There was just room for two people sitting, socially distanced, and with the door open to afford a healthy, clean breeze. Others had to sit on the platform.

A new item in the shelter was a rubbish bin, which we had not placed ourselves. It was brimful, a useful place to drop your picnic waste when you've eaten in the shelter. We emptied the bin (as we were passing through Toddington, where there is a Grundon bin) and replaced it empty in the shelter, but with some misgivings, as we felt that it actually attracted waste.

Another item for discussion was the new running in board, made only a season ago. The paint is already peeling off wholesale; the whole bottom strip was bare. It looked to us as if the primer was not doing its job.

Derek's 1963 steam in colour.

 

The REC Chiltern 200 tour.

This was booked to run from Oxford to Bicester, then Oxford Road Jnc, Kingham, Chipping Norton, Kingham,  Honeybourne, Stratford S&MJR, Banbury, Hook Norton, Banbury, Buckingham, Verney Junction, Calvert Junction, Princes Risborough, Chinnor, Princes Risborough, Oxford.

In those days colour film and its development were expensive, so Derek took a select few pictures, which we are sharing with you below. Those of Buckingham and Verney Junction have already appeared on this blog. 

Derek comments:

The Chiltern 200 Rail Tour on 14 September 1963 started from the former LNWR station at Oxford Rewley Road. 6111 is seen waiting to depart with the train for the first part of the tour. 

GWR 6111 at Oxford Rewley Road, at the start of the tour. The train shed is visible in the distance.

 

The station was built in 1851 on the site where Rewley Abbey had once stood and the remains of which were pulled down when the site was sold to the LNWR.

The station building was constructed by the same engineers, Fox and Henderson Ltd., who were involved in the building of Crystal Palace. Both used bolt together cast iron sections. As a small boy I can remember standing on the island platform in the train shed with my grandmother for a train journey to see her relatives who lived near Islip. This must have been at the latest in 1951 because that was when passenger services were transferred to the main station. For a long time after this the forecourt area was used as a tyre and exhaust centre. I can remember the oval wooden office there that must have been the former ticket office. Fortunately, after the sale of the site for the construction of the Said Business School, the unique train shed was dismantled, and rebuilt at Quainton Road.

On the left, GWR 6111 at Bicester, London Road, and on the right, the north end of Chipping Norton tunnel, looking somewhat disused already. The final passenger train on the line ran in 1962, a year earlier, and freight services were withdrawn in 1964.

 At Kingham 6111 ran round its train while spectators stood on the footbridge.

 

 Later the REC tour reached Stratford Old Town station (a bypass today) where water was taken on.

 

The train then paused at Kineton, where there was time for a photograph, albeit with everyone spilling out around the train, and the camera pointing into a blistering sun.

The last picture of the Chiltern 200 tour was taken during a stop at the pretty little station of Hook Norton, famous for its brewery and its viaduct. The viaduct was behind the camera, and the loco drew up on to it in order to run round.

There's a useful summary of this rail tour on the six bells junction site, with some extra photographs:

https://www.sixbellsjunction.co.uk/60s/630914re.html

 

Next, Derek looks at an interesting swing bridge at Rewley Road:

During some lunch times at secondary school I would take myself to the GWR station, The lunchtime arrival of the through train from Cambridge would be the subject of an interesting loco from the Eastern Region. From a vantage point at the main station overlooking the Rewley Road site I can recall the time when a pannier tank was charging up from the far depths of the curved sidings with regulator open just as a freight was trundling over the swing bridge and past the signal box. At which point the signalman came out of his box and stood at the top of the stairs with his arms aloft to attract the attention of the crew of the tank. Luckily they saw the problem and did a massive slide to a halt stopping short of disaster.

When the railway line from Bletchley to Oxford was opened in 1851 it passed over a short stretch of water known as the Sheepwash Channel linking the Oxford Canal with the Thames. The adjacent Great Western line to Banbury had a fixed bridge which was high enough above the water to allow river traffic to pass underneath. With the LNWR line being much lower, a swing bridge, designed by Robert Stephenson, was incorporated into the line. This bridge was hand operated, and was in use until the closure of the Rewley Road goods yard in 1985.

 

Bridge in the open position

Narroboat passing the open bridge in the Sheepwash Channel.

Side view of the bridge

End view of the bridge.

The accompanying pictures show a view of the bridge remains in 2003 and then in more detail as they were in 2012. A narrowboat is seen passing the open bridge in the Sheepwash Channel. In its closed position the bridge would have butted up to the pier on the opposite bank where the line led into the former LMS Rewley Road station. The bridge in the background carries the former GWR line north from Oxford station. The close ups show the remains of the bridge and the winding gear. The houses in the background have been built on the route of the line to Rewley Road station. The Oxford Preservation Trust was leading a project of restoration but I am not sure if anything has come of this yet.

 

Here is a link to film of the bridge being operated: http://vimeo.com/47233273

There was also a brief shot with part of the bridge in view in an episode of Lewis: 'Fearful Symmetry'.

Finally, sacrilege perhaps for some who think he should have kept his powder dry for GWR engines, a shot of a VC10 from Gaydon taken by Derek above Kineton. Remember the VC10derness slogan?