The final rivet

Tuesday on the canopy.

Another frosty start on Tuesday, but at least it was dry, and a weak sun edged out towards mid day. No sitting on our balcony though, it was too bleak.

The early morning view of the canopy works, from the footbridge centre span.

Up on the footbridge we have a store of profiles which have been cut and painted over the last few months, and are now ready to go up. Not long now!

Climbing up the ladder to the scaffolding platform, we were greeted by this oil can covered in frost. That eventually melted, leaving the platform clear, but still not particularly warm. But we felt lucky, imagine what it would be like with a winter storm of heavy rain and strong winds. We managed to plough ahead on Tuesday, no worries.

Steve grinding off a burr on one of the extension pieces, with a plate yet to be fitted like the one bolted up above.

We spent Tuesday morning drilling more holes, now the more complicated ones. Riveting was announced for the afternoon. The various extension pieces, and purlins touching the rest of the canopy, all had to have junction plates drilled and fitted.

Neal drilling the second of 4 holes into a set of junction plates.

The finished product in place between canopy and new purlin, the mag drill used to punch through a hole for riveting.

Then, finally, after innumerable little holes drilled left right and centre, we were ready to start the second day's riveting.

70 rivets went in on Monday, how many would we do on Tuesday afternoon, and would we complete the job?

 

Tuesday we had Steve as 'chef' on the barbie, with yours truly again as rivet runner, and Neal with Ian on the guns.

Here is a typical scene from the day, with reamer air powered  drill abandoned in the foreground, and a rivet gun on the floor at the back. In the middle is the item of interest, the larger of the two 'wings' leading off our newly fabricated replica posts mostly riveted up, but with a few more to get in.

We were particularly keen to get lots of rivets in here because this area will be in full sight of the public, but of course rivets in place also give the whole structure much more stability than nuts and bolts. One or two places will have to have bolts as we can't get the guns in due to tight angles, and those bolts will be secured with Nyloc nuts. Nuts can shake loose over time. In fact, tightly secured nuts shook quite loose when we let off two rivet guns in the spot next door!

In between there were still one or two holes to be drilled such as here, where John had just fabricated and fitted an end piece for the Malvern side fascia board.

This picture shows the other 'wing' and all the rivets put in around it. The two bolts on the upper left are examples of where we couldn't get the rivet guns to bear, so they will be Nyloc fitted.

Our end of the day picture: The whole area around the final truss peppered with rivets (painted in white primer). Many other rivets are also in place, but were driven in back at Toddington when the truss was made up, 4 years ago now. Four years!

We did finish the riveting job. We completed 57 rivets, plus the 70 on Monday, and felt really great about it. This is now a sturdy structure, it won't be coming down in a hurry!

Riveting facts (no pun intended): There are +/- 2500 rivets in the first part of the canopy over the building, and another 500 or so in the last part of the canopy we are now completing. That includes those used in the manufacturing of the steel parts at Toddington.

The rivet guns, hoses, manifold, torch et al have now been returned to the steam department, and we can now move on to the next stage, the woodwork.

Saturday at Toddington

Just a few newsy images taken during a call to the yard at Toddington on Saturday.

The yard shunter was just pushing a marooon coach to the business end of the unloading road.

The vehicle in question, Mk 1 SK E25501, has been sold and is awaiting transport to its new owner. It's not our best coach, the tyres are thin and the inside is stripped out, so the sale should raise some useful cash.

Outside the loco shed the 76077 team were burnishing the loco's rods. A big job, they've been outside at Barry for many years.

Inside the shed was also interesting. We had heard that the yard lamp from the garden in Frome had received some attention.

It was true - it's been stripped of its green and black paint, and is now in light stone and cream. The overly large (and bent) ladder brackets have been removed at the top, and John from the canopy team is busy making a new platform for it, based on his experience when making one for the previous post we found. The ladder we have, and money has been found to place an order for a new lantern on top, the same as the other two. This post will also go in the yard, to light the path to the lighting up wood pile.

In the background is a six wheeled GWR milk tanker, recently acquired by a loco dept member, we heard. Those wooden supports look terrific, although our guess is that it will not be fitted with that cab... Our freight collection is getting a real fillip this year, following a  revival of interest and the establishment of a small team for goods vehicle restoration.

Finally, the car park has seen large amounts of fresh ballast arrive. This is destined for the replacement of the crossover (behind the camera), funded by the Trust and carried out by contractors. All the steel and wood components have been sourced, and work is to start imminently.

Wednesday with the Usketeers.

A great day, as Paul was back from feeling a bit poorly. His sense of humour was definitely back, and he was ALSO back to sharing out fudge like there was no tomorrow.

Here are our two principal mischief makers, Dave (L) and Paul (R), peering out from behind the window.

We're in a real house now, and you can open the window too!

We immediately celebrated Paul's return with coffee and some doughnuts in our corrugated iron 'welfare facility', followed by a moan about rising prices, including the shocking increase in the cost of doughnuts at the local supermarket.

Strange though, that didn't affect their taste...

Today was a bad day for our waistlines, as everybody had brought some sort of sweet delicacy, and we all had to try one.

The weather was bright and fairly warm, but the forecast for the next two days is frost, so we were a bit reluctant to lay too much, in case the mortar suffered. 

We did wrap it up well at the end of the day in hessian, so fingers crossed.

We thought we could back fill this corner, which is not structural, in case there is a frost issue with the mortar.

From the lofty height of our trestles, now equipped with new, yellow safety supports, we got a good view over the hut as is today.

You can see that the height of the wall is reaching the level of the top of the windows, although not yet everywhere. As we reach that height, thoughts turned to lintels, which the original building did not have.

 

 

In the two pictures below, taken in the Usk goods yard, you can see what happens after 150 years when a cheap, pinewood lintel is used.

Collapse of wooden lintel over the smaller window

Collapse of half of the wall following the failure of the wooden lintel over the big window.

Although there was an argument for using wooden lintels again (we won't be around when they fail....) we felt we should not saddle future generations with such problems. 

The big replacement window we have had an arch former over it in its previous location, so we will use that to give it a blue brick arch, the same colour as the chimney. The two smaller windows and the door will get a hidden lintel with a sheet of galvanised steel plate to support the stone blocks above. We will make it narrower than the wall, so that you will only see the stonework. Commercial lintels are for brickwork only, and have an upright down their length which interferes with the irregular blocks we have. Another alternative is a concrete lintel, but that will be visible and not in keeping with a 150 year old building. So a discreet steel sheet it is, and we set off mid afternoon to arrange this with a local fabricator, paid for out of a little fund that we have from friendly well wishers.

Back to the blocks then.

 

 

As a part of the infill around the chimney, Dave preferred to fix the three loose blocks at the front first, so in the picture he is preparing a bed of mortar for the first block.

John in pensive mood today.

Then it was lunch time, with a sharing of Battenberg cake, coffee, and a second doughnut for pudding.

In between, a green salad...

After lunch Dave finished the front row, filled in around the chimney with some big, irregular rocky blocks (which we were glad to lose somewhere) and while the trestles were at that corner, we lifted up, and eventually bedded down, a new quoin on the corner. It fitted beautifully.

In our last picture of the day (the yellow safety supports have already been taken down for secure storage again) you can see the new corner block nearest to the camera, with another 8 inch example to one side of it.

Here again we are almost at the height of the tops of the windows, so those lintels will be needed soon.

Then it was time to wrap everything up in cosy hessian, and hope the mortar won't suffer from the minus 2 that is forecast at the end of the night. Should be OK, was the advice we had.