Fabrication completed!

Saturday along the line

Fantastic weather on Saturday, cool in the morning, and hot in the afternoon.

Isn't nature beautiful? This is at Hailes Abbey Fruit farm, a spot we love. 

Yellow Broom, pink Cherry blossom, white Cherry blossom, blue skies.

A quick visit to Toddington to notify the signalman of our intentions found the two SKs that are on loan to us from the NYMR, back on the railway, after we loaned them back again for a few months. We think they like it here....

After agreeing terms with the Toddington signalman, we set off for Broadway to finish off the seized bolt that we failed to undo last time.

We left a replacement next to the job, so all we had to do was cut through the old, seized one.

To prep the disk cutter, we had quite a few starting attempts at Winchcombe, before choosing one of the several that would start.

Tim did the business. This big, powerful motorised disk cutter got through the bolt in seconds. We do have a lighter model, but it was reluctant to come out with us. Last used in 2019, it may be that the petrol had gone a bit off. Today's petrol does that.

Mike hadn't seen the torque wrench before, so Tim explained to him how it was set.

With the bolt replacement near the goods shed done, we thought we'd have lunch at Broadway station, on their picnic benches.

We were impressed by the cafe's offering, on a table in the open doorway at the moment. They have a new, local supplier for ice cream, which we wanted to try. We were offered a special discount - the left overs from their own testing of the product! (all very safe, don't worry)

Then the train was sighted.

7903 Foremarke Hall trundled into the station with the day's first passenger train. It's always an event.

With the new spearhead fencing going up on the right, the station is starting to feel more sizeable, more important.

Wait until we put up the P2 building!

As we returned to our vehicles, the Hall ran round, and can be seen here by the new bracket signal.

Not an ideal picture, and this happened on a number of times today, but the locos are running chimney first, and a picture of that is often straight into the sun, especially in the mornings.

 

 

Our next job was to check a bolt at Cheltenham, reported to be loose. We couldn't find it, but tightened up those in the area with the torque wrench.

Members of the team watch 4270 leave CRC for Broadway.

There was a bit of a to-do at CRC. On entering the Race Course, we were overtaken by a police van. This blue lighted its way to the station, and to our astonishment, two more cars arrived as well.

On leaving the Race Course, we learned that they were looking for a 'missing person'.

We went on to Bishop's Cleeve station site, and met another police car, also looking for said missing person. A police helicopter hovered overhead. But how do you identify a missing person from the air? What do they look like? It seemed a hopeless task set to them, we felt.

Back at the Bishop's Cleeve breathers, we finished off the job from last week (when we had the wrong spanners with us) and just tweaked the nuts a little, to make sure they were at the right tension.

And that, my friend, is a CWR breather.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We did each end of the CWR section, with a 700 yd walk in between. This is the sort of stuff that keeps you healthy.

Here we are nearly at the northern end of the CWR section through Bishop's Cleeve. That big pine on the right signposts the location of the original station here. The bridge being crossed by Foremarke Hall is Station Road bridge, the main road through here.

Back at the entrance to the site, by the throat of the former goods yard, we threw all the tools back on the back of the Landie, and prepared to set off for home again, but just waited for Foremarke hall to come back again.

There was quite an audience by the foot crossing. Both sides, that must be a bit of a worry for the loco crew, hope they all stay put!

Monday with the road-railer.

A big job today, move all the components of the three crossing renewals to their respective sites at CRC (one) and Toddington (two), and install one of them.

 

A large road-railer was hired in from Quatro. This brought a spreader beam and two trolleys, on which the crossing components and 8 FB rails were placed

The little train then advanced to the foot crossing by the platform ends at Winchcombe to receive last minute instructions, after which it set off for CRC. There, one set was unloaded, destined for the northern loop turnout

The PWay gang stayed behind, with instructions to collect tools, and set of for Toddington, where the returning road-railer would meet them.

First of all we had to drag a timber off to the platform, to be picked up on the return journey.

These timbers are certainly heavy, it was hard work, even with six on the three nips.

At Toddington we loaded our kit on two trolleys, and set off for Toddington north.

The road-railer returned to Winchcombe after about an hour, where it picked up more components, and the timber we had placed on the platform.

Here's the road-railer train just arriving at Toddington, as we were unloading.

At Toddington north, our job today was to replace the crossing itself on the turnout leading to the north carriage siding. It had a full rake of coaches parked on it, so could not be cut off.

We had an afternoon to do the job. Fallback plan B was to simply put the old crossing back again, should the prior measurements not work out after all.

The team was asked to also dig out three timbers, which would almost certainly have to be moved, as the base plates under the old and new crossings were not exactly in the same place (which is itself a little strange).

While we did this, the road-railer dropped off the relative crossing components for the northern loop turnout, which is one of the three on the 'to do' list.

We dug out the three timbers, and undid the fishplates and chair screws holding the old crossing in place.

The road-railer was so quick, and lifted so easily, that we quite missed the magic moment when the one ton old crossing was lifted out. So there's just a picture of Andrew picking up one base plate that stayed behind.

The replacement crossing arrived equally fast, but this time we were ready.

The replacement crossing dropped into place and, phew!, the measurements had been correct and the length fitted perfectly with the length of the old one.

 

 

BUT... to our astonishment, the angle of the siding road did not correspond with that of the new crossing. The ends of the rails met with either one, or the other rail, but never both.

Here is Andrew checking the gauge, to see what is going on.

 

 

 

 

 

The conclusion was that the old crossing, in at least its third location over its long life, had been altered at some point. This was done by moving the base plates along, so that the crosses widened or narrowed to suit some new location. The result was that with the new, standard crossing the Cotswolds side stock rail was not in the right position, and needed to be moved. That meant moving the base plates, redrilling et al, a long job that would immobilise the rake in the siding.

 

It was decided to put the old crossing back in, and locate the new one in the 4 foot adjacent, handy for a future move by manpower. We will arrange for the rake to be moved, so that we can put the new crossing into the through line for running trains, and deal with the repositioning of the outer siding rail over several days.

Here is new the crossing parked in its nearby position.

 

An overview at the end of the day. We didn't get the new crossing in as expected, but what we did achieve is that we got all the heavy materials out to each of the three sites, so we will not be needing to hire the road-railer and its crew again.

At the end of the day the road-railer moved into the car park, ready for collection by two lorries. It used the unloading road, another one of our relaying jobs successfully completed!

Tuesday on the Broadway canopy

Hopefully one last final push (as last week's was...) to get the two columns finished, the last two pieces in our puzzle to complete the final segment of the Broadway canopy.

 

We want to get these babies off to the galvaniser's.

Left to do is to weld on the base plates and supports, and to finish off the half round decorations, a long and slow job of welding, and grinding back down again.

Here Neal has welded one of the two base plates on, with its 4 supports, and he is test fitting four bolts he made (out of pieces of threaded bar and some nuts we had) which will be used to adjust the height and angle once in situ.

Then Neal got his trusty carpenter's plane out and smoothed off the corners of the steel boxes. That's an old skill we bet you never heard about.

Later in the day he was working on the second post, with the base plate tacked into place, and a bit more welding up needed on the decorative ring. Yours truly will then spend a long time grinding the welds back down again, until the right shape is arrived at.

Neal too did some of the grinding down, that generated a lot of sparks.

But at the end of the afternoon we were satisfied, the decoration looked passably like a casting, and should be a bit more convincing once galvanised and painted.

 

 

While we were grinding down the welds on the decorative strip we were aware that Neal was welding something on the base plate, although he seemed to have finished earlier.

When we emerged from grinding, goggles off, face mask off, earmuffs off, all was revealed: The master had signed his opus. (Also with the initials of his two assistants).

This will all be buried underground, but you are proud of your work, aren't you?

Outside on the new concrete unloading road, an example of how one department helps another:

Bob here has overhauled this trip jack for the PWay department. It's being trundled into a position for easy pick up. These jacks are in frequent use by the PWay department, and normally give very little trouble as they are simple and robust.

Bob did recall that when he was testing these professionally back in the day, he noted that they had 15T cast into them, but his own procedures determined that 7.5 tons was the SWL. He wrote to the factory but got no reply.

He did note however that subsequent castings had 7.5T cast into them!

Finally for the day a look at the completed posts. The bottom 10cm of the decorative boxes will be below ground.

The concrete bases and bolts for the bases are already in place at Broadway, on either side of the footbridge steps that we erected. 

Now the two posts will be sent away to be galvanised, as anything that sticks out of the ground always rots at ground level, and we don't want to have to make them a second time. We are aiming for quality, it always pays off in the end.

Wednesday along the line

A low turnout today, mostly due to Telehandler training, so the remaining 6 went to Broadway to start re-tightening the recently greased fishplates, in case of any movement after trains started running.

The Telehandler training also prevented work on the Usk project.

It was a bit draughty and rainy, so, having started at the northern headshunt, we were glad for a cup of Broadway Cafe tea when we had finished in between the platforms.

Behind Robert is the new quad royal poster board we put up last week. Doesn't it look the business?

The cafe is open for outside visitors, as announced by A boards outside. Several people did walk up too.

Then we continued further south, seen here at the end of the loop. Robert was very keen to be seen to be a professional lookout.

There was only a single train to look out for, seen here arriving from CRC just before mid-day.

Brothers In Arms -  Ben (loco dept) and John (PWay) greet each other most heartily.

20 minutes later 4270 set out south again, seen here just before Pry Lane bridge by the new outer home signal, not yet in use.

We finished the Broadway area soon after, as next is a long piece of CWR all the way down to the viaduct. An afternoon resumption from the viaduct was washed out by a torrential rain shower, so we called it a day at that. You can see the heavy looking clouds in the pictures above.

Derek's 1965 steam pictures in colour.

With this set of original steam photographs Derek is back home from the Isle of Man and North Wales, and we see him back in the greater Oxford area.

How easy it was to just stand by the lineside, and wait for something interesting to chug by!

 

On the 25 February 1965 at Bourne End. Herts, don't ask me what I was doing here because I can't remember!, is 2-8-0 48628 with a southbound freight. [A08.17]

This is one of the Brighton built LMS 8Fs, which entered traffic during the war in 1943. During its 23 year life only two allocations were known - Willesden, and Oxley. In the picture it was working out of Willesden. Cashmore's broke it up in 1967.

A couple of shots at Hinksey South on 2 March 1965. First is 6998 Burton Agnes Hall on a southbound freight with the remnants of some snow on some of the wagons. [A08.18]

Burton Agnes Hall is well known of course, as a preserved engine, now awaiting overhaul at Didcot. This picture already appears on the internet, at Preservedbritishsteamlocomotives.com, but it's a bit purple there. Derek's pictures on this blog have mostly undergone some necessary colour restauration, as the 1960's colour slides had a tendency to migrate to red or blue. Remember that you can buy a full sized scan of any of his pictures from breva2011 (at) hotmail.co.uk.

 

Then looking the other way a Battle of Britain class on a northbound Bournemouth-York train. [A08.19]

Derek and yours truly had a discussion about the possible identity of this loco. We think it's 34084 253 Squadron. By blowing up the original scan you can make out 34xx4 on the cabside. Here is how Derek worked it out:

I have looked at this website:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_SR_West_Country_and_Battle_of_Britain_class_locomotives

and after eliminating those already rebuilt or withdrawn at the time it leaves only two possible candidates:

34064 Fighter Command and 34084 253 Squadron

The notes say that 34064 was fitted with a Giesl Oblong Ejector in 1962. I would know one of those if I saw one and perhaps it wouldn't be identifiable from where I was anyway.

34064 was shedded at 72B Salisbury and 34084 at 71A Eastleigh. Eastleigh is a better candidate than Salisbury for being in charge of this train.

Here is a photo of 34084 in 1958.

https://thetransportlibrary.co.uk/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=57667

If mine is 34084 it had its BR emblem updated by 1965.

I favour 34084. The name looks two part, with the first part short. 34064, being Fighter Command, the first word is too long.

253 Squadron lasted for 16 years, despite falling down an embankment at Hither Green during a shunting accident. It wasn't preserved, but 257 Squadron was:

Although the preserved example is a different loco, you can see the similarity in the name plate and oval squadron insignia.

Another interesting fact: there are some pictures of 253 Squadron after its accident at Hither Green here:

https://www.national-preservation.com/threads/bulleid-light-pacifics-b-r-era-34079-34086.1293034/

On 6 March 1965 and it had been snowing again. Another shot at Hinksey South and Standard Class 5 73171 is on a northbound Bournemouth-York train. [A08.20]

This BR standard, being a modern engine, had a very short life of only 9 years, from 1957 to its withdrawal in 1966. It was scrapped by Cashmore's, but five example made it into preservation.

On the same day, this time looking the other way, and the southbound Pines Express is approaching just as a northbound train with a Hymek is about to hove into view. With my view then obscured I didn't catch the loco number. [A08.21]