Friday at Broadway.
Good weather, not to hot, and we are making hay. Just two of us at Broadway, on bricks that Friday.
We're on the back wall, as there is no progress with getting more specials. John was working on the southern half of the back, where he reached row 23. This was mostly laying half bricks, which is very slow.
This is the view of Friday's work, from the inside - one row along the top, just visible by its wet, darker mortar.
We still have plain bricks around the building, so can carry on doing the back wall, which is all plain. We will run out of bricks by the building at some point of course, but we have several more pallets in a truck, which will be retrieved by the RRV on Friday Aug 1st - it's a date !
No service trains on Friday, but there was a silver Fire & Drive experience about.Here it is, trundling into Broadway, as seen from the signal box.
Looking the other way, here is the southern end of the building, where the 'toilet' window is almost bricked in now, after John put two courses on here.
Saturday, out with the gang.
Broadway this time, down to Peasebrook farm. We had a fun list of faults to find, and check off.
The first one was an old friend, clips that keep pinging off the crossing at Broadway south. We inserted an extra pad underneath the baseplate, to limit its movement. We'll see. The day started damp, as you can see, but warm.The next one was a bit further down, on the other side, after a tricky diagonal crossing (the single line crosses from the up side to the down side as it enters Broadway).
In the background are the brick parapets to Pry Lane bridge, much used recently by Severn Trent, building an extension to the sewage treatment plant, which has now completed (and was running, as we sat there and ate. Interesting flows of sewage, this way and that.)
This was 3850 approaching, tender first, and one of two 2-8-0s out on Saturday.
When the train came back the job was done, so we watched the sleepers behave perfectly as it passed.The other 2-8-0 also chugged by effortlessly. Here we were looking at two reportedly cracked concrete sleepers, but there was no real action to be taken, as the cracks were minor and quite old.Then we moved down to Peasebrook, opposite a farm with horses in several paddocks. Some horses seem extremely nervous, and began to run around just by us being there. Others continued to graze unfazed, even as we began to work.
This was the spot, where there was a long dip on the Malvern side. We packed over 40 sleepers here, all down the Malvern side. Strange that this minor movement should continue, even after we invested quite a bit of money here a couple of years ago, reducing the height of the ballast by contractors, and widening it to support the shoulders. Another long embankment that we have, at Gretton, sees little or no such movements.During our sleeper packing, we were watched over by our dependable lookout - Dave.
His eyes steely, his gaze unwavering, steadfast the stance.
All the robelling means that a constant supply of ballast is required. This is to fill the holes left by the tamper, after the ballast is encouraged to migrate into the voids under the sleepers.
The ballast has to be found from elsewhere, wherever there is a surplus, dug up, and carried back to where the guys are working.
And that on a hot, damp, muggy day like Saturday.
Sometimes you just have to take a rest then, where the only support is the truck.
After we finished this fairly lengthy, say 35 yard long, stretch off we were ready for tea. We put away the tools, dropped off any rubbish and headed to the toilet block. (did you know that it is one of the oldest structures on site, pre-dating our arrival?)
There we found this new little monument, made up out of three ground signals. Isn't that nice!
Monday at Broadway.
Two of us on site on Monday.
The first thing that happened is that the mixer died. This is what a dead mixer looks like - upside down. Just as we were emptying the first mix into the barrow, there was a grinding noise, and it seized up. We had to empty the drum by hand - lovely. Luckily we had a second one on site. This one had once suffered a broken belt, but was repaired by Neal, so it was ready to spring into action.
On Monday John continued along the rear, where the wall goes on rising steadily. You can see that this part (the southern half) is just half a dozen courses away from the steel frame. John does an excellent job here, the bricks are laid cleanly and straight.
From the inside we can see the courses above the internal blocks, which have been laid in the last few days.
The northern half (right, off camera) is still a bit lower though.
We had a nice visitor at Broadway on Monday, Greg. Greg has been a supporter of the line since 1976, way before the famous derailment. He was in charge of the Toddington site in 1981, later rose to be plc board director, and today is closely involved with the Restoration & Archiving Trust at Toddington, the charity behind the museum at the rear of P2. He has a great deal of experience in rescueing old railway artifacts and restoring them, and we consulted him about our GWR upholstered bench, and how to treat the woodwork.
There was a very useful chat in the Broadway gang's shed. Behind Greg is a real enamel totem of Broadway station. It came to us in about 2015, but we can't use it (except in the shed) as our line didn't have totems. Maybe it's for sale? As it's a replica, it is in immaculate condition.After lunch there were increasing squalls, and John had to get a jacket, despite the general warmth that is still around.
On the southern corner John has reached the 24th course of bricks, and has set out the 25th. We cut 120 plain bricks in half for him, to make 240 (half) headers. That makes a heck of a lot of dust, but as it was a Monday, there were no trains running.Neal has been busy in the greenhouse, even on Sunday. They were riveting more of the steelwork. And yet there is still more work to do, he says, which is why we have not yet started on manufacturing the many wooden dagger boards that we will be needing for Broadway.
Wednesday with the Usketeers.
A very satisfying day, as we were able to complete the fitting of both sets of downpipes, front and back.
Last week were were prevented from going any further, as we realised that we needed to raise the pipe run around the back, so that we would have a straight drop over the plinth, and a swan neck over it. Instead of a constant diagonal. An urgent order from the cast iron pipe supplier was needed.
The special, additional order promptly arrived at the Blogger Country Pile, and was taken to the weighbridge on Wednesday.
It was like Christmas! There was great delight in opening the box.
In the background is the plastic pipe that we are replacing.
But before that, Dave had a shock. When he unlocked and opened the door of the weighbridge first thing, a pigeon flew out past his ear.
That pigeon had flown down the chimney, and must have spent the best part of a week in there, there was birdshit everywhere. Paul had to get a bucket of water and rinse the floor, as well as about half of the surfaces. Arghhhh !We thought about a cover for the chimney pot, but it is a particularly wide one, not the usual standard width, so how we prevent a recurrence is not clear. Perhaps it was a one off occurrence, because we have not had a bird in the weighbridge before.
It took quite a while to unwrap all the cast iron bits from their protective bubble wrap, but finally we were there, and here they are, laid out near their intended place of use.
Before we could start fixing the new bits to the wall, we had to finish off what we were doing the week before.
We wire brushed the original downpipe, ready for painting with black Hammerite, and Dave cleaned the inside of the gutters, before doing both paint jobs.
Meanwhile, Paul got the gutter sealant gun out and filled in the joints where the pipes met.
The finger is the best distributor of sealant...
Having finished the back, we addressed the side, and all the new bits that we bought.
We pushed on through, and by the end of the afternoon, we had it all mounted, and looking great.What we need to do next week is decide the height of the ACO drain, and set it in concrete.
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The leftovers after the downpipe mountings - broken original bits, and some new castings that were too long. |
We also completed the fitting of the front downpipe. This needed an extra collar with ears (several items do not come with fixing ears, so that needs some thought to get a stable construction). One of these items without fixing ears was the swan neck, needed to go over the plinth, and here you can see that we fixed it in position from underneath, followed by a plastic bend that we found in the C&M yard, which will route the stormawater away from the walls. Them we backfilled the hole. The plastic bend won't be visible, as it is underground. Only genuine cast iron will meet the eye.
It was unfortunately not possible to take the stormwater away from the site in a longer drain, as the new deck is in the way, and the terrain around has been raised over time.
Our last shot of the day is of the C&M lads dismanteling the former Building & Services workshop. This is coming down, as the roof is damaged, and some of the uprights are beyond saving. The workshop was vacated several years ago when the (-renamed C&M) moved their activities into the workshop behind Churchward House.
This process has taken place once before. Originally, this workshop was built and used by the builder D.A. Cook from 1968 onwards. The business grew, and when we bought Winchcombe (and the rest of the railway) in 1981 we sold them a site further up the yard, where they built a new workshop and new HQ.
The business continued to grow, and about 5 years ago Cook's sold their second workshop, yard and HQ to the railway. That is what we now know as Churchward House.
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D A Cook's Head Office in 2018 - now GWSR Churchward House. |
PWay news from Wednesday.
The gang was at Gretton today, our longest stretch of wooden sleepered track.
These sleepers were second hand when laid in the 1990s, so not in the finest condition even 30 years ago.
You can see the issue with this sleeper here. It's got a little sapling growing out of it, and the chair is held on by a throughbolt.
We don't like throughbolt chairs, as the nuts on top seize up, and are impossible to re-use.
But 2807 love them, as they make fine boot scrapers, which they can sell to raise funds for our oldest GWR loco.
Plenty of digging out saw an impressive 8 sleepers changed today, helped massively by the new electric tools
A sub section of the gang also ironed out some dips in the track, also with the (newish...) tools that we have, the Robel hand tampers. They make us so much more productive.
Seen at Winchcombe on Tuesday was this Incident Response Vehicle from Network Rail. Nothing to worry about though, readers, they were here for busines, to discuss some potential collaboration.That's a good initiative, and welcome news.