We make a start with the roof

Thursday at Broadway.

The day has come at last, we have started putting on the roof!

First, a little shot of the brickwork corner that we broke out to attach the new fascia board. John has rebuilt it beautifully, you can hardly see where, except that the mortar is a bit darker as it is still wet.

Wednesday the Broadway maintenance gang helped to get the 10 or so roof sheets we got out of store at Toddington up on to the scaffolding platform. Here they are, ready for fitting.

Before fitting any roof sheets, we need to have a 6x1 board in place, and painted. This holds the guttering, to which John has screwed the brackets. A length of guttering is waiting in the background.

And then the special corrugated iron roof sheets went on. This happened really quickly, they are easy to fit.  They are of a thicker grade than is normally available in the market, and they are also powder coated in light stone underneath, and black on top.

It quickly got dark underneath.... that's because of the scaffolding in the way.

Only a few minutes later the whole of the Malvern side was on and screwed down.

Now we need to fit the lead sheeting, a remnant of the previous lot can be seen on the right.

The top row will be glass, on the special GWR profile glazing bars, one of which is also visible on the right.

 

All you have to do to fit them is drill a hole, and push through a screw with a couple of washers round the neck. The sheets are attached to the timbers that we fitted underneath.

The gutter is also now in place.

Neal had fun fitting the sheets, it's just a little bit of work, with a lot of impact. It's the rewarding part, after a lot of fabrication and fitting of steel and wood.

At the end of the afternoon we were here. The last bit of the canopy looks exactly like the first bit, which of course is the intention. It was never finished off. A small sheet is still due to complete the near end.

On the section over the building there is only a single row of glass panels, but on the section we are building, which covers the original entrance area, there will be a second row on the other side of the ridge. That lights up the circulating area underneath.

Here's another shot from half way down the steps (which we also made....). It's rather into the sun, but shows our new part of the canopy well, with its typical arched ridge at the top.

The last shot is just to show the side, with its gutter installed. The gutter is a bit smaller than original, but the (non-original) size was selected by the builder, so we had to follow here.

Friday at Long Marston and Broadway.

An early start today, to pick up order of 3 lintel plates for the Usk hut. We were lucky with the price (still £170, but could have been £320) as the supplier was a fan of the railway, and had some off cuts at an old price which were pretty much what we ordered.

Another curious link with the railway - the company is based on the site of the former Long Marston station, which was converted to an industrial estate when it emerged that the GWSR failed to acquire the entire line from CRC to Stratford RC. And the railway was already a customer, as it had supplied parts to Dinmore Manor. So it's a small world, and people like us.

Neal drilling a hole

Now we need to have the 3 lintels galvanised. They each need to have a hole in them, so that they can be dipped in the bath, and Neal very kindly agreed to do this with the mag drill, which we noticed standing by the stairs...

Thanks, Neal!

As the galvanising companies that we know are at some distance from the railway, we wondered if there was some way of getting the items to Newport or Hereford as part of another load.

 

We're pleased to report that a solution has been found. A neighbour of our friendly shotblaster - also a local man, whose father was a BR fireman on our line - regularly sends products for galvanising, and will arrange that our lintels go with the next load. That will save a lorry journey, just for us.

Back to Broadway for the day.

John and Neal spent much of the day fitting the cast iron gutters. The Malvern side is done, today is was the turn of the Cotswolds side, seen here in a test fitting.

Neal also addressed the start of the downpipes, which as you can see formed part of our marathon painting programme, so they are now ready to fit.

A slight issue is that the mountings for the downpipes are slightly too wide for our home made post.

Neal did get both holes drilled, but is looking for a more elegant solution. The back of the cast iron mounting is slightly curved, while our post is of course straight.

We thought you might like to see John's brick laying handiwork. Remember when we broke out the corner to fit the car park side fascia board?

The fascia board is now in of course, and on Wednesday John refitted the bricks we took out, cut to accept the board in its place. One brick is now spare - an expensive corner plinth - and it has gone into store for the P2 building, which also needs them.

John did a good job here, the fit is excellent and you'd never know this corner was out a few days ago.

And in the afternoon we started fitting the other, car park side, row of roof sheets

Screwing down another roof sheet.

This happens so quickly, they all went up in the space of an hour. You just push it under its neighbour, rest it on the wooden supports we fitted earlier, drill holes for the screws, get the electric drill and Bob's yer uncle.

Next one please!

Here are 6 of the 10 sheets already fitted - more than half way to the end.

The level was for the gutters - they have to have a slope downhill to the downpipe.

Seen from the other end, the second section looks finished, but there is one more sheet to go.

And here's a look from underneath. 

That window arch is in the end of the building. As per 1904 this ought to be a blank wall with a row of quad royal poster boards, but the builder would not be swayed. 

Looking slightly to the other side, you can see the Malvern side sheets in place. That's 50% of the roof on now, just the central glazing to fit in the middle. That involves fitting a lot of glazing bars, and laying on the Victorian coloured glass sheets. There's also lead flashing to fit between various sections.

Our last picture today shows the final canopy section from the footbridge. You can just about make out that there are two rows of corrugated iron sheets, one row on each side, with a gap of two rows each side of the ridge.

And here is the solution to the 'all the nails on top of one' problem. This was due for posting last time, but was one of the files that disappeared in the ether, and we forgot to reload it - sorry!