A snowstorm

Saturday on 76077

A snowstorm greeted us on Saturday. Only some sleet was forecast, but that turned into thick snowflakes, which together with the storm that was crossing the UK, quickly built up an inch of snow on the road. Despite some traffic, the B4632 was quite white, and the descent into the little Toddington roundabout was 'interesting', as the ABS came on, even at walking pace. There was clear evidence that someone had approached it at more than walking pace, as one car track in the snow went straight on and ended up against the roundabout wall. Well, that's how you learn.

Saturday was a Santa day, so there were quite a few volunteers about. One braved the trip from Gloucester, so we knew that there would be at least two of us on the intended 76077 day. In fact there would be 4.

 Just as the snowstorm stopped we quickly took this atmospheric shot of our signal box.

This is 1963....

 

 

It reminded us of Derek Palmer's 1963 shot of 6111 coming off the Princes Risborough line at Kennington Junction.

 

Back in 2021, Foremarke Hall took out the first train, and as we arrived 4270 was just coming off the yard to take out the second, with a Growler at the rear.

We can't run round at Winchcombe due to the slip repair just beyond, so the Santa trains are being topped and tailed with a diesel.

 

4270 paused at the box, then advanced in the snow to join its train standing in the station.

The 'Santa Special' board is already on the bunker.

 

 

We repaired to the mess room for an early cup of tea and a warm up, then watched the tankie take its train out in the direction of the 'North Pole'.

Looking at the snow covered hills behind Hailes Abbey, you could quite believe that Winchcombe was the North Pole.

Then it was time for work.

The job was to polish two of the coupling rods of 76077, our Toddington Standard. Most of the loco is with LMS at Loughborough, but some pieces like the motion are at Toddington so that we can do some work here as well.

 

 

 

 

One of the rods had already been cleaned (the top and front are cleaned, the bottom and rear are painted black) but the other, in the picture, was still pitted. This is an ex Barry engine, after all, but has also stood outside at Toddington for probably an equal number of years.

The second coupling rod was worked on with an angle grinder and a belt driven sander, the latter proving to be the most effective at eliminating the hundreds of little rusty craters.

The second rod had been worked on before, but a thin coating of rust quickly appears if you don't apply a coat of oil at the end of the job. We did, this time.

Closer examination of the rods revealed the previous owner, hammered into the top. Both had the same number stamped on them.

The grinding and buffing kept us going all day, until we ran out of the buffing sandpaper, and called it a day at 3pm.

The Santa trains also came back home to the roost at about the same time.

Here is Foremarke Hall poking its nose into the shed, before reversing out again. The steam escaping from the cylinders allowed this very atmospheric shot.

Monday on the Broadway footbridge

Monday sure was cold. We kicked off with minus 2 degrees, and finished the day with a comforting 2 1/2 degrees above zero.

There was snow everywhere, as you can see on the picture. Not only on the footbridge, but also inside the footbridge, all over what we were painting. After a warming cup of tea we set to work. We brushed all the snow off, and underneath the woodwork to be painted didn't look too bad.

 

Broadway (...Shirley) signal box in a wintry setting

It was another day of painting for us, even Neal was reduced to the lowly task of brushwork, as there is no more carpentry until all the boarding is back painted where we want it to be. Then it can be reassembled on the Malvern side steps.

 

A secondary painting area has been set up down on the platform under the canopy. This area was in fact the driest on Monday, and John was able to pain the structural woodwork for the Malvern side steps all day long.

As you can see, we're still only at the primer stage, it needs an undercoat of dark stone still.

At the end of the day, when it started to get dark, everything had another coat, so we were well pleased. The whole lot is another stage further, despite the cold.

 

Canopy Hex Lamps

Great news from our lamp manufacturer, the long awaited set of two hex lamps that go under the Broadway canopies at the bottom of the footbridge steps is ready for delivery.
  

The new hex lamps in the workshop of the manufacturer

Its been a long process of study, interruptions by Covid and finally manufacture, not forgetting supply issues with some of the materials. But we are there at last, and aren't they beautiful? The name 'BROADWAY' is etched into the glass, and there are 4 imitation gas burners with little LED bulbs. As with the three canopy lamps already in place on P1, these will be suspended by an imitation gas pipe and would originally have been supplied by acetylene gas from a hut on the other side of the road.

The design was developed by study of original 1904 photographs of the station, as well as of similar lamps that we know of, for example at Birmingham Moor Street.

The cost of these lamps has been entirely covered by a generous sponsor, and will cost the railway nothing. They underline once more how keen our supporters are to have an authentic heritage railway. We are extremely grateful to the sponsor who made this possible. There may be another, similar thing to sponsor, if that tickles anyone's fancy. We are at an early stage of research at the moment.

Tuesday in the Dixton cutting

A good productive day. A team of 8 advanced the rail head, as it were, to the end of the replacement rails laid out.

The first job was to clip up the rails replaced (but not clipped up) by the team working on Saturday.

The replacement rails are in here, with the duff rails with the squats parked to the right.

 

 

No, Chris isn't feeling tired, this is him observing the magnetic thermometer stuck to the rail to see what the temperature was. The indicated 10 degrees gave us a gap of 10mm to establish.

 

 

 

 

 

Here Chris has woken from his 'slumber' and announced his temperature findings.

Peter on the left now drives in a wedge to open the gap out to the required distance.

 

 

Meanwhile, John has secured himself a sitting down job for the day in this mini digger. It really is very 'mini', this digger. It took a long time, even with the engine set to 'running hare' instead of 'tortoise' to drive from skew bridge to our work site.

 

 

The last pair of rails laid in the previous working day has the rail ends not quite in the right place on the sleepers, so the latter needed persuading a bit with the Duff jacks.

Then we were finally ready to fetch the spreader beam, and lay in the next pair of rails. Peter and Chris walked it forwards using the Permaquip trolleys.

 

Walt in the Telehandler then recovered the spreader beam and started on the last pair of rails. The old ones were lifted out, and in the picture you can see him manoeuvering the Telehandler into a central position viz a viz the rail to be lifted in.

Note how the wheels of the Telehandler are in the 'crab' position, a very useful way of travelling half sideways as here.

 

Far away in the distance John was working away with the mini digger. The idea here is to scrape together excess ballast for use some way further along. 

John spent the whole day doing this, and was quite puffed at the end of the day.

 

This is the end of the normal track replacement area, with 14 panels replaced. It's not the end of the job though. Some of the rail we took out was partially good, so we are going to move up and deal with the next section as we go along. The poor rail will be removed and put in store for sidings, so nothing is lost.

 

Walt cutting off two 5m lengths.

Having reached the end of the normal relay, we had a gap of approx. 5 yards, so cut some of the rejected rail into 2 x 5 yd lengths to plug the gap - on a temporary basis, to get the Permaquips across, for example.

 

Not all the new rail had fishplate holes, so that was another job to do. The drill only cuts out a circle, so that a little plug comes out, revealing a new fishplate hole.

Such a plug can be seen centre right, on the gauge plate.

 

 

Here's our last picture of the day. We have just lifted in the two 5 yd sections of temporary rail. It was extraordinarily heavy, six of us only just managed it, right on the limit. But that's what we live for, we don't want a job that involves looking out of a window with a cactus.

Update on the Stanton Bridge 8 appeal.

Two weeks into the appeal, we have raised £101.000. This comes from a little over 500 donors, giving an average donation of £195.

We're half way! The target is still £200.000. Fancy helping us? Details on the GWRT trust website.

A look over the fence - North Warwickshire line

A trip to the Christmas market at Birmingham New Street, using the North Warwickshire line from Stratford on Avon.

A bit kitschy...

Next to a trip to the market, we thought it would be interesting to travel on the northern extension of our very own Honeybourne line.

The train from Stratford fair rattled along, sometimes at a cracking pace, especially on the approaches to the hills around Birmingham. It made us think, did the trains on our part of the line travel at that speed as well? They probably did, our line speed was 70 mph!

There was no sign of any land slips or repair work. The earlier part of the trip was fairly flat, but near Wood End it got quite hilly and there were some lengthy embankments, just like ours. They led to Wood End tunnel. The entrance to Birmingham city centre was quite dramatic, over a high embankment ending in Moor Street station and a tunnel to Snow Hill.

A class 68 at Moor Street, on a Marylebone train

Moor Street station was quite beautiful, a lovely modern day station but beautifully preserved in Victorian GWR style. It's perfectly possible to reconcile the two.

We were surprised to see this class 68. It looked like a push-pull service to Marylebone. Sadly we had to leave before the loud class 68 burst into life for its trip back to the smoke.

On our return to Stratford, we took a few pictures for comparison purposes. The station resembles the Honeybourne line architecture, but is a little older. The original footbridge is of the older type with a break in the steps and a turn towards the centre span, which is therefore shorter. A modern footbridge and disabled lifts were installed behind it, but had little custom as far as we could see. Most people preferred the original footbridge, which was more open and easier to access.

Note the layout of the canopy supports over the end of the steps, very similar to what there was at Broadway once.

The Stratford canopy, similar to Broadway's.

This is the view from the disabled footbridge, over the new one. There are two trains in the station at once, which go to different destinations, but have to set off north, as the line further south, to the Cotswolds line, is lifted. Fingers crossed that the promoters of the reinstatement succeed in their aims. It looks like such an obvious thing to do. Travel north to go to London? Eh?

Class 165 unit, destination north (to London)

Stratford on Avon - a heritage station. We like that. Can Toddington say that if we have a modern visitor centre in the middle of the historic site? We think not.

This is the end of the platforms at Stratford. A No Trespassing notice, but no dire warnings of £1000 fines, as we have at Winchcombe.

A last general overview of Stratford station. It's really quite pretty, they have done well to preserve the atmosphere.
 

 

Wednesday on the Usk hut.

Four of us on site, and steady progress under a threatening sky to start with. We met in our little corrugated iron shed, and then the sun came out, so we set to work with renewed vigour.

 

 

The first thought was, why not measure up the four sides of our stone built hut, and see if it is still square, and are the sides the right length ?

Dave and Paul got the big tape measure out and went round the building. Just 5mm out here, and 10mm there - not bad for a building made up out of roughly hewn stones! We were right chuffed.

 

 

We made up a mix, and then Dave put up a quoin, which needed quite a bit of support from behind. We use wooden wedges, which we withdraw a week later when the mortar has gone off.

 

 

Paul repaired the sample truss we took with us from Usk, to make sure the constituent parts didn't get lost among the other odd lengths of woodwork round the site. 

In our humble view, this truss is not original, so the roof may have been re-done at some point.

The previous layer having settled down, Paul fixed the upper part of the big window frame to the nearest stone block. It should be very stable now. See how close to the top we are now!

He then sawed off the corners, as these were originally designed to be included in a brick built wall, whereas our is a block one. Remember, this window is from another weighbridge, as the original one at Usk had collapsed due to the absence of a lintel or arch above it. Ours will have an arch now, Neal from Broadway having made us a former already.

 

We also had a go at tidying up the fireplace that Paul built. It had the old former in it, and a lot of builder's rubble, so that's all gone now. It looks the part, doesn't it?

The next course above it will be in stone from now on. Only the actual fireplace was originally in brick.

 

A quick walk up to the Greet Road bridge allowed us to photograph the works of the slip repair.

Not much to be seen since last week, they were waiting for a machine that inserted the sheet piling without vibration, to spare the neighbours.

We were also given a figure for the distance that the 'Lego blocks' will be pushed back - 2m. That seems adequate now to secure the up line reinstatement, should we ever want to. Or extend the loop once again.

 

 Dave then transferred to a different corner, to bed down a quoin we had placed with Jules last week.

First he tipped it backwards, so that he could put down a layer of mortar. We then gave him a hand with lifting it on, which has to be done very gingerly so as not to damage the mortar bed, or loosen any of the stones around it.

A bit later the quoin looked like this, with a few more blocks placed on the right at the same time. Note how the quoins face in alternate directions as you go up.

 

 

In this picture we see Dave pointing his work to the right of that same quoin, so that's another course completed on that face.

 

 

With the remaining mortar he bedded in two more blocks on the other side of that quoin. The weather forecast for the rest of the afternoon was rather dire, so we decided to protect the site against the forecast rain, and subsequent frost tonight. Lots of hessian, and a plastic sheet over the top, also over the big window to keep the woodwork dry.

 

 

On the big window we are now within 9 inches on each side of the top. Two more quoins next week will see us to the top, and they will be the jumping off point for the arch over the window. That will consist of two rows of engineering blues. The 9 inch stones were selected today, but we need to wait another week to make sure the mortar below is firm.

It was just as well we stopped when we did (about 3pm) because the heavens absolutely opened up. We just about manged to make it to the cars and jump in. This is what we saw through the windscreen... winter weather is here.

See you all next week!