Getting wintery now

Monday at Broadway

Ice cold on Monday morning, and as last week, all our woodwork covered in millions of fine droplets. However, the sun soon came out and dried it, and we were able to resume painting.

For more space, and a more reliably dry area, John set up shop under the canopy. We did this last year as well.

There are no trains at Broadway until after the Santa season, during which they are topped and tailed between Toddington and Winchcombe. They can't run round at Winchcombe, due to the contractors doing the slip repair in the cutting. Their haul road is right on the turnout.

 

Yours truly did daggerboards (for the final part of the canopy) up on the centre span, and then these bits of boarding underneath. They are from the trackside part of the P2 steps.

 

 

 

As we painted, Neal stripped the rest of the boarding off the Malvern side. The P2 steps now look very bare. Neal was up on the centre span trimming the boarding, another big painting job for us.

We hope the weather will remain kind to us until the new year, so that we can conclude the painting and final fitting of the boarding. If it's wet, we can't.

The scaffolding for the final part of the canopy goes up immediately after the last post Christmas trains, some time after January 4th. That will be interesting. We'll have 2 months to put it all up, fingers crossed. That includes the dagger boards, guttering, drain pipes, riveting, repainting everything in topcoat.... did we mention putting up the steelwork and the glazing?

Dinmore Manor on the SDR

Thanks to a correspondent, we can show you a couple of nice pictures of their Polar Express train. These were taken last Sunday, and thanks to John Leonard we are able to show the involvement of GWSR permanent resident Dinmore Manor.

Ol' Dinmore looks a bit strange here, she's been disguised with a big headlight, and a cow catcher - maybe they need that, down there in Devon... The cowcatcher is designed to allow normal coupling on.

Dinmore's whistle has also been replaced (for the duration, we hasten to add) with an American style hooter, which has certainly surprised the locals.

 

The second picture shows GWSR visitor 5542 on the other end. The Polar Express trains on the SDR are topped and tailed, with 5542 taking the train to the 'North Pole' (aka Totnes) and 7820 hauling it back again.

Instructions to the crew are to make a spectacular entrance when returning to Buckfastleigh! We should emulate that at Toddington, but perhaps difficult at the moment with the speed limit over the loop turnout. We hope to replace that with a new turnout there soon.

 

Tuesday in the Dixton cutting.

A grey, murky day, on which 8 volunteers turned up at Gotherington Skew bridge to swap out some more rails in the Dixton cutting.

We split into two teams.

One to clip up the rails swapped out on Saturday (3 pairs out, 2 pairs back in).

The other team to lift out and then back in, a panel further along.

We're still pretty much at the northern end of the cutting. The Landie is parked a little distance away, as the Telehandler with that huge beam takes up a lot of space when it manoeuvres around. Best to stay out of its way.

Once the Telehandler had parked itself in the right place, the next pair of rails could be lifted in.

Parking was slow, as you had to arrive in exactly the right spot opposite the centre of the rails, and then the rails had to be pushed sideways a couple of feet this way or that, each time by loosening the Camlocks and pushing them along the rail a bit, before lifting again.

In this picture you can see the rail laid out that has to be swapped for the existing, which has too many squats in it.

Note that the lighter coloured replacement rail has its joints in a completely different position. This is because the existing rail is generally shorter, so the joints move up when the new rail is laid in.

 

This causes problems with the new joints, as they are often as not poorly located for the original sleeper spacing. So each new joint means moving one or two sleepers along, and lots of digging, barring, lifting. That's very slow work.

 

 

Another issue we had on Tuesday was the inevitable discovery of one or two broken sleepers. You can see from this one that the break was hard to see, being located under the rail, and then travelling sideways.

On returning to the yard at Winchcombe it became clear that we have no spares at the moment. All the good ones were laid on the Broadway extension, leaving only damaged ones back in the yard. We might have to buy a few more, to have a source of spares.

Another rail about to be lifted out.

The aborted excursion to Winchcombe delayed progress, as we didn't want to lift in more rail, without having replaced the broken sleeper. It's much harder to do when the rail is back in position.

The picture above again shows the overlap between the old and the new rail joints.

At least we made some progress on Tuesday, but it would have been nice to have done more. The gang will be back on Wednesday. (When they actually laid in three more pairs of rails, having found a small and mostly forgotten cache of spare sleepers at Stanton)

Wednesday with the Usketeers.

A good day for us, with 3 block layers at work. It's now almost too cold for us to work with the mortar, we must avoid any frost. We should just about scrape by this week, with 0 degrees forecast Thursday night.

 

 

Our opening shot shows three new blocks laid on the southern corner. Jules helped with lifting the big 9 inch quoin up. That should be bedded down next week (if it's not too cold).

 

 

 

And our very own Paul is back! He felt unwell a couple of weeks ago, and had a little holiday. Nothing serious, luckily.

He's back here on the start of the chimney, working on a way to get a square exit to the fireplace into a round shape for the liner we plan to use.

We had a little exploratory trip to the slip site in the cutting currently being repaired (see further below). On the way back we snapped the team working on the station side wall of the hut. The wall doesn't look so tall there, but this is because they are standing on some boxes we re-employed. The number of courses now laid, not counting up to the damp course, is 10. It's a bit hard to be exact, as some courses start with 9 inch blocks, and then divide into two a bit further along. That's how it was built originally.

 

 

Jules started backing up in this corner. He did so well, that we had to bring in more stones from the crates outside to keep the 'ready to use' pile in the middle up to a usable size.

As a result, we were able to empty the next crate. We are getting through them, slowly but surely.

 

In the distance we heard the sound of hammering - what was that all about?

It's the 'Toad with a hole' - more in the C&W blog about this great project.

 

 

On Tuesday, while on the way to Gotherington Skew, we saw signs of a large crane at the Winchcombe slip site.

 

We waited for a suitable moment to take a picture, and that came today. It's moved down the access road and positioned itself by the bottom of the slip.

 

 

From the track side you can see the extent of the slip. The fencing, placed right on the edge of the cutting, has gone awry as the ground has slipped away, lubricated by the run off from the downpipes of the new houses.

The crane was used today to install a hydraulic pump. This will be used to insert the first 4 of the sheet pilings visible in the foreground.

On Friday the actual piling machine will arrive. This will drive in the rest of the piles.

The 'Lego' blocks will not be removed, but they will end up moved a few feet further back. Our contact on site was unable to say whether this left enough room for us to lay a longer loop on the up line trackbed. We jolly well hope so; the insurance settlement should put us back in the position we were before the slip.

On our return to the Usk construction site, we found the team had broken for lunch. Due to the cold (6 degrees max today) it was decided to eat indoors, that is to say, in our 'welfare facility' (without polluting diesel generator) which is the lamp hut. It was very cosy in there.

Why is Jules excluded? It's self imposed; to protect someone vulnerable back home. You can't be too careful.

What did the fireplace look like above the arch?

After a lunch, involving Mrs. Dave's excellent fruit cake with brandy, it was back to work, and here we see Paul examining the drawings that we have. Just how did they do, it back in 1853?

 

While the chaps beefed up the inside in several places, we had a stalk around the piles of blocks, and found these 4 for the NE corner.

Just two more courses then to the top of the door frame.

Jules was backing up the southern wall behind those big blocks Dave laid last week, while Paul has started on the chimney (inside) and back filled the corner at last. That will enable us to start another course in the foreground.

 

 

Mid afternoon Paul, Jules and John had to leave, so at the end of the day there were just the two of us on site. Dave reckons we did five mixes (which would be a record, so we'll have to go and buy more mortar), and looking at the area around the chimney in the previous picture, most of that mix ended up in there!

The last block layer on site today, Dave worked on the NW corner, setting down the row of little blocks we laid out for him last week.

And this is the result of his work half an hour later. A nice level course, making life easy for the next one. It's so hard when the underneath isn't level, the course you are trying to put down goes up and down and all over the place.

Dave the moved round the corner, and with the remains of the last mix bedded down the two larger blocks just left of the window, followed by a row of smaller 4 inch ones up to the corner.

Job done! Now we could go home, as the light began to fail.

This is what the building - for we can call it that now - looked like near the end of the day, and before we put the hessian down to protect against frost.

Post Scriptum:

A picture by Jules has just rolled in. He was able to take this from outside the tin hut, where he was sitting in splendid isolation, as you saw above.

Here we all are, in our 'Welfare unit'. 

From L to R: Paul, John, Self, Dave (the better half of)

See you all next week!