Definitely the last one this year.

Saturday, out with the gang.

Six of us on Saturday, rather fewer than normal. No doubt many will have had a hangover, saw the mizzly ice cold weather out of the bedroom window, and thought - Nah....

But we kinda enjoy what we are doing, so after tea and a chat we set about testing the combustion engined tools (blue smoke in the GUV) to make sure they ran, before we take them to the site.

Which wasn't far away - we went to finish off the move of the EE siding stop block.

More or less normal trains were back on Saturday, but with added mince pies. They looked well filled too (the trains, that is), which is a nice reward for our efforts.

But soon we are going to take out 300yds of track at Didbrook, so we're making hay while it's foggy (?)

The work site wasn't far then, just 7 coach lengths away.

But one volunteer drove there in the white Transit (OK, with all the tools in the back) and at the end of the day he had to fill in his vehicle report with the milage run : 1 mile.

When we prised the stopblock out of the ground last week, the second hand (in 1995) sleepers under it were so rotten that most just stayed behind.

So the first job was to dig out the leftovers, and prise off the cast iron chairs. Those for the plain track were 4 bolt LNWR 1903 and went on the scrap pile.

 

The special stop block chairs (which have double or even triple rail jaws) were stamped BR and cast in the 1980s, which was a surprise. But they still had the old throughbolter form, which meant that all the seized up sleeper bolts had to be cut off. Luckily we have battery disk cutters these days.

Then they have to be slid back under the rails.

Being much longer, these special chairs are very heavy, best handled with 2 pairs of hands.

With the chairs back under and to one side, it was time to fetch in replacement sleepers. This is still a manual job, but thanks to the age old nips not so hard, with 4 of us on hand.

Trains rumbled past as we did this. Here's one just setting off across Chicken Curve. Still at 10mph as in station limits, but once the loco gets to the far side they open up for the Defford straight, which is a sound that's nice to hear.

We got all the replacement sleepers in no probs, but then things got more difficult as i.a. the rail structure of the stop block made it very difficult / impossible to drill the holes, and do up the chair screws.

Two had to be done up by hand with a T spanner - when did we last do that? 1985?

Notice also how the vertical rail is bent, a detail specially allowed for so that the wheel flange has a slot to run in at rail level.

 

 

In this picture we got all the holes drilled OK, but now find that on the 3 rail section we can't get the Mills keys in. None at all - it can't be us then, there's something going on here.

Bert Ferrule here is trying to open the jaws of the chair further with wedges, but even the most squashed up Mills key won't go in. The others look on, they've all had a go and failed as well.

 

 

 

There were various theories as to why not, but this close up shows what is going on: the bottom of the rail is not fully home in the chair, as the web is being held back by the top of the jaws.

The chairs here are modern and ex BR, the plain track rail is Midland, while the rail in the stop block - the one that's an ill fit - is of unknown origin. Therein probably lies the cause. It's such a mixed bag that pieces don't fit.

We'll probably use shaved down oak keys for this short section immediately in front of the stop block.

The fog hung around all day long, but made the Mince Pie Specials very atmospheric.

Here's one of our black 2-8-0s coming off Chicken Curve.

At the end of the afternoon the stop block was pretty much done, except for fitting the trimmed down oak keys, and removal of the 4 lengths of scrap rail.

All 3 sidings here are on made up ground, which is settling and giving all three something of a lean. The original ground of 1905 is on the other side of the mile post.

As falling daylight added itself to the mist we put away the tools and had a cuppa in the nice warm Coffeepot.

Here you got a choice: Cake, or healthy apples?

Outside 3850 waited in the gloom, as the driver trudged over the crossing to the signal box, hands deep inside his pockets.

The green Growler then trundled in, with two happy drivers beaming at us from their nice warm cab. How the other half lives...

 

Another with a broad smile on his face was Alex in C&W.

He was very happy to be able to show us the first BR emblem on a carriage, in place of our former corporate fleet logos.

It's the famous 'Ferret & dartboard', and it looks brilliant.

All the chociolate & cream coaches wore these, whereas the blood & custard ones were unadorned, we heard.

Monday at Broadway

A storm is forecast for mid-week, and ice cold weather end of the week, so we are getting our hours in during the first half of the last week this year.

The full gang of three again on Monday. John on bricks, Neal on digging holes, and Yours Truly in support of both.

Here Neal is joining future down pipes from the building to the newly created pit in the middle of the platform.

A little test with some water revealed that all was working OK, the test quantity did arrive at the trackside centre drain.

Monday, unusually, was an operating day. The first visitor to the site was 3850, running round a Mince Pie Special.

A short while later Neal had completed the trench, installed the pipe and was already back filling.

The long conduit running in front of the building carries cables for the lamp posts.

An atmospheric shot of one of the black 2-8-0s arriving at Broadway.

 

John spent the day on the north end, then came round to the back.

We decided to lay out some pallets for him to stand on, as the fresh clay here is unbelievably sticky and tenacious. Nobody wants to work with boots twice normal size because of all the clay sticking to them.

In the middle of the day it became pleasantly sunny, and with everyone off the platform and on board the train, 3850 was able to set off for Cheltenham.

It was still cold enough to show lots of steam though.

The low sun, and a new mobile phone camera, made for fine pictures on Monday. These wintery sun pictures are only possible during a short time each year, between Christmas and the New year.

As the train accelerated past the goods shed, we noticed that the 'railway' car park below (council owned) was actually about 80% full, an unusual occurrence.

This could be acting as an overflow to the main village, something we noticed during the pre Christmas shopping days.

During the day John laid courses 8 and 9 on the north end. It's only a short bit, so progress looks faster here. He then carried on round the back.

Along the back John did an 8th course half way along, then the start of a 9th one as well, until the mortar ran out.

Days are short at the moment, and what with pointing up your work and as everything has to be securely covered at the end of each day, that was the end of brick laying for Monday.

Having done one trench, Neal started another. And why not?

This one will connect the second riser pit to the service ducts emerging from the future store room. We gave the trench a good working over with the mattock, after which Neal was able to shovel out the ash and bricks quite easily.

The service ducts connect the P1 store room with the P2 store room, and will contain electrics, data cables, alarm cables etc etc. The water pipe will also go into the same trench.

The penultimate train into Broadway, the one with the diesel on the other end, and a quick turnaround, saw quite a large crowd waiting for it. 

With our huge outgoings for coal and electricity etc. it is good to see that business is keeping up well this year, slowly recovering from the COVID effect.

Tuesday, last day of the year.

Just a quickie, to throw a few more bricks down before the bad weather hits. Two people on site today.

 

Trains still ran, although less busy than yesterday.

Mrs. Blogger reports supermarket less busy too. Are people staying at home for new year?

Today was a dry day, although increasingly windy as the next storm arrives. John worked along the back, laying headers all the way along.

It was meant to be a short day, but in the end we did two mixes as usual, and stayed almost to the end of daylight.

Yours truly produced 80 or so half bricks, which John immediately used up.

The result was one more row laid, all along the back. We then covered his work, battling against strong gusts, which tried to pull the plastic sheets from our hands before we had them weighed down with bricks. We got there in the end.

The two trucks filled with clay will be emptied on Thursday and brought back to Broadway for one more filling. We'll be back next week, depending on the weather.

 

 Well, that was it for 2024. Thank you for your interest, comments and support. It's very much appreciated.

On this last day of the year we had a look at the combined blog statistics, and think they might be of interest to you. There have been three main ones:

Name                          Since            Total views                                 

CRC Platform 2            2014               321.000       Single purpose blog, now inactive

Extension blog              2015            1.690.000       Single purpose blog, now inactive

Heritage Herald             2017               960.000       Ongoing

All time views                                   2.971.000

Two more blogs belong to this group: Civil Engineering, and Construction & Maintenance. We set these up for the relevant departments and blog post material is either sent to us for posting, or else posted direct. However both are currently inactive due to lack of material presented.

So, nearly 3 million views. That's a lot of interest in the GWSR. Well done, give yourselves a pat on the back, readers!