Saturday 27th - one last push.

A brave PWay team came out on the Saturday, immediately after Christmas, to complete the pre-assembly of the replacement turnout for CRC south. Yours Truly was conspicuously absent, (grandchildren and a Pantomine...) so we can show you the state of play at the end of the day, thanks to Bert Ferrule, who was there. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Previously, the RH side here had been drilled and bolted down, and on Saturday the closure, stock and check rails were gauged to the crossing, and also screwed down. In the LH picture the switches were also laid in, and the whole sequence numbered, ready for quick (we hope) assembly at CRC.

At the end of the day (RH picture) the switches were unbolted again, laid to one side, and the timbers moved up to gain parking space, it being Santa season, with lots of volunteers on site. 

The whole unit, in parts, is now ready for transport to Cheltenham, as soon as trains stop running.  Ideally, we would have liked to move the three major parts in one go, but the destination site is cramped and we don't have the lifting capacity to unload larger parts on site. So as a kit it has to be.

 

 

 

Monday at Broadway.

The canopy gang met for a site discussion. It was icy cold, with a cutting northerly wind, so we sat in the cafe, with just a quick venture outside to see the actual places that we were talking about.

Services were running! It's all week, Friday excepted. (Check that, if you're coming !). Motive power were two lovely GWR passenger engines, Pendennis Castle and Betton Grange.

 

Here is PENDENNIS CASTLE, just completing the run round. We took two shots, but couldn't decide between them for the blog, so you get both.

Here is the Castle, just buffering up. What a lovely, elegant machine that is.

It was a Castle that was photographed at Springfield Lane in 1962, pulling the last down Cornishman along our line.

Can you imagine Highclere Castle thundering through Broadway at 70mph with 11 on? It's max 25mph now, sadly.

 

 

Monday turned out to be busy at Broadway, as you can see from this snapshot here. Good news for the company!

We went to the Neil Parkhouse book signing at Toddington on Saturday, and on the way from Broadway we saw that the car park under the road bridge was unusually full, there were photographers parked along the B4632 at Stanton, and there was a large plume of steam in the air, as a northbound train crossed Stanway viaduct. 

The book, No.6 in his series about Gloucestershire lines, is called Cheltenham and the Cotswolds Lines. It's very high quality, all colour period photographs, with excellent descriptions. With 528 pages, it'll keep you going for quite a while.

We recommend. 

 

 

Some points from our P2 discussions:

- We're going to see if the FoBS can be persuaded to fund the purchse of some cast iron canon bollards for the pavement outside the station, as we have now had 3 or 4 occasions where heavy vehicles mounted the pavement, and cracked the slabs, and twice, broke the cast iron inspection pit covers. We're fed up!

- The interior of the signal box, due to come into use next season, needs finishing off with linoleum, brass lever leads (probably £2000!) and a cast iron stove. 

- No news from the brickworks. Our best guess for a delivery date is end of February.

- In the meantime we intend to cast the foundations for the third post at the footbridge end of the canopy, dig some drainage trenches for stormwater drains along the platform edge, fit the base plates to the three manufactured canopy end posts, clean them and have them galvanised. They can then be fitted. 

 

 

Wednesday - New Year's eve.

Two Usketeers, on an icy but bright morning. It was minus 4.5 degrees on arrival, too cold to do any brick laying. 

 

 

We sat in the weighbridge hut, and Paul treated us to these eclairs, which went down well with the coffee.

We discussed our plan for the day.

We'd go up to the site of the hut, measure up for the fireplace brick arch, and knock out some more of the damaged concrete blocks of the retaining wall. 

 

 

 

 On the way we met PENDENNIS CASTLE, our visiting engine this winter.

 

 This was a very loud locomotive....

 

 

The train for CRC was about half filled, we noted, although the returning one was quite full, which cheered us up.

 

 

 

 

Paul is always a keen waver, at anyone willing to wave to him.

The Castle was really getting into its stride here. 

 

 

When it was gone, all was quiet, and about 5 minutes later there was a lovely curl of steam and smoke that emerged from Greet tunnel.

We also have a video of this on YouTube, but with the other locomotive in service today - 6880 BETTON GRANGE.

https://youtu.be/Cbs2uLXLfhY 

 

Then it was off to work. The buckets that we had left out to fill with rain water were frozen solid, another reason for not laying bricks today. You need a minimum of 3 degrees throughout to do any brick laying.

 

 

This is the area of damaged concrete blocks. It's also where the tree stump was.

We are going to remove the damaged blocks, and prepare a flat surface to replace them with complete, but second hand blocks that we have scrounged from around the yard. 

 

 

 

Paul and Yours Truly took turns in hammering a chisel under the broken blocks. For some reason the mortar used (back in the 1950s?) was extremely hard, much harder than the blocks the mortar was supposed to cement in place.

 

 

 

Eventually BETTON GRANGE returned from Cheltenham, this time bursting with happy passengers.

Paul had an errand to run in the afternoon, so we joined the small team that was dismantling the CRC replacement turnout, to make it ready for transport. 

 Pete and Dave D were making a stack of steel components on the other side of the road.

Paul was using the Telehandler to push together the timbers, and take them across the road to a stack, 6 at a time.

Switches and check rails were swung over by Dave D in the RRV, with a stack of timbers in the foreground, ready for stacking by Paul in the Telehandler.

 

 

 

Last thing we had to move the barrow, which had been filled with the chair screws removed from the timbers.

That barrow was so heavy with all those screws in it, it seemed rooted to the ground. Not a chance of lifting that.

But STEVIE made light work of it. 

 

A turnout QKD kit.

 

 

 

 

At the end of the day the whole turnout had been disassembled, and stacked on the other side of the road. This frees up the car parking area that we had rather guiltily used up before.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wating 'in the wings' as it were was the Warflat, recently re-decked with sleepers (which the Usketeers had hoped to use, hence our appeal for a fund to buy some more)

 

A last note concerns these fridges and microwaves that people are bringing to the railway. 

These are electrical goods, and as such - anything with a plug in fact - are not allowed in the skip, but need to be taken to a recycling centre. They are definitely not 'scrap metal'. In fact, if you bring these to the railway, you are not doing the GWSR a favour, on the contrary. Now the railway is obliged to dispose of them in a legal way.

 

In fact some of the microwaves still have their glass plates in them. That is not metal, but does add to the weight. 

So please dispose of your electrical waste properly, don't load it on to the railway. 

 

 On this New Year's Eve we would like to wish all our readers a Happy New Year, and see you in 2026.