Friday PWay gang.
Five of us last Friday. The greater idea was to continue clearing the garden centre site of PWay's temporary storage, and take these to Stanton yard, where space needed to be cleared for some second hand turnouts available at an attractive price.
The slip site was looking increasingly filled, Friday morning. Good progress is being made.
The stretch between Gotherington loop and the breather at Bishops Cleeve has already been partly welded (pairs of 60ft rails into one of 120ft)
This was for the second half. The welded joints will reduce broken fishplates, reduce the amount of fishplate greasing, and finally eliminate half of the pounding of the track here, where two slips have already occured.
A second site for welding was inspected in the latter half of the morning, this time at JJ Farms bridge, where BH rail transitions to FB, and a very expensive and increasingly rare fishplate is used. If that breaks, it's a big bill.
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| Defective BH rail. |
On the same site a defective BH rail had also been identified, some time ago, and a pair of new, replacement rails positioned.
The defect has probably been there since the rail was laid in the 1990s.
We will incorporate the welding and rail replacement into one job.
With that done, we could get on with the actual job for the day, movement of PWay materials from the greenhouse site.
We picked up both Transits at Winchcombe, where we found the class 122 in an unusual spot. It's ready for the Cab a Loco event.
Then, on arrival with the truck at Toddington, we found this 08 on the unloading road. We haven't had an 08 at Toddington for many years. It is thought to have come for the diesel gala.
With both our trucks parked up, in line for easy loading, by the old garden centre, we started lifting on pallets of 4 crossing pads. These are quite heavy, so we prudently loaded only 3 per truck, instead of the possible 4 that would have fitted on.
We then set off for Stanton yard, which is only about a mile away down the B4632.
At Stanton the pallets of crossing pads - which we got for free - were neatly stacked down the side.
We made three runs altogether during the afternoon, so that's 18 pallets moved away from Toddington, or about half of what was there. Another day like this should see them all cleared.
Monday and Tuesday at Broadway.
Two similar days of laying bricks along the platform side and painting. But on Tuesday the roofer came, at last. He had to call off twice, due to a nasty bout of Gastro-Enteritis, after eating a curry.
This was the brickwork situation on Monday, where John had built 5 of the 8 columns between the doors and windows - over half way.
The tower scaffold is opposite the centre of the building (columns 4 and 5)
Monday was May bank holiday, so there were a fair few folk around. The Monday canopy team was also able to enjoy a Cappuccino in the cafe, which was open (not normally on a Monday)
Tuesday saw John do column 6 out of the 8, and a new phenomenon: wooden arch inserts, which allowed him to build around them and so make up the launching stones (cut at an angle) for the arch itself.
Going round the site, we were a bit disappointed to see that more notices have been thought necessary.
The little GWR ground marker is now struggling to create atmosphere, being somewhat overwhelmed by two modern notices. One even appears twice; it warns that cars are parked at the risk of the owner. Whereas there is not actually any customer parking there at all, with the exception of a couple of disabled bays. Two new notices for that, plus a second 'No E-Scooters' at the bottom of the drive, next to the one screwed to the heritage building.
Along the replica spearhead fencing plastic flowerpots have been hung.
They weren't around in 1904 either.
But back to Tuesday. The roofer came at last !
We are getting a glass fibre and resin roof covering over the new store room. Originally this was open; we are hiding this roof a few inches below the wall, so that the appearance of the Gents is still the same, but inside should be a useful workshop, so that some of the still remaining builder's containers can be cleared from the site.
This was the (sunken) roof, as prepared by Neal. The brick wall surrounding it will be topped by concrete patio slabs (previously: carved stone slabs.)
It was interesting to see how the waterproofing of our smallish roof was being built. The chap told us that previously he'd done a church in Evesham, to replace lead that used to be there.
The covering is of a heavy grade glass fibre mat, fixed in place and made waterproof by resin rolled into it. This is is very durable, and flexible. It will last for many years.
This picture shows the half way stage on Tuesday (he'll be back to complete the job with a topcoat on Wednesday). The MDF panels were coupled together, and the seal was very tough, demonstrated by jumping up and down on it.
We were convinced....
With this in place, we now have dry storage directly on site, and not 100 yds away in a container. Yours truly spent a lot of the day painting undercoat on door and window frames, as well as the three doors of the building. They must be of excellent quality, as those doors were extremely heavy to move during painting !
On Tuesday John worked to complete column 7, and then started on the last one, column 8.
There was a lot of brick cutting required - few bricks now fit just like that. There are always 'headers' to be cut - stretchers, cut in half. Every other row is made of headers, so bit by bit we are cutting thousands of them.
It's very dirty work, the brick dust gets everywhere.
While crossing the footbridge to put some builders rubbish in the Grundon, we took this snapshot downwards to give you an updated overview of the site.
This was a bit of a special moment, as Neal is holding the last special brick (one of the extra ones we had to order) which will complete the last circular brick column on the RH end of the building.
A small PS to Broadway, a couple of days ago a fuel truck pulled up short before the bridge, decided to go up our station approach (barred by two signs to people other than staff or residents), go right to the end, and try to do a three point turn in the narrow car park in front of the station. In doing so, it knocked over the Cotswolds stone wall, and two of the 'staff only' car parking signs. Advice by a resident to use the turning area was ignored.
Our entrance canopy, unprotected by bollards, was lucky to survive.
Wednesday with the Usketeers.
Three of us today, with a welcome return of Dave, and Jules off on a sailing holiday to ... er... Scotland. Hope it's not too windy up there, Jules!
Today we really wanted to move the 6 corrugated iron sheets up to the tunnel site, but how? The FoWS cart was too small. Our hearts gladdened when we saw STEVIE arrive at the platform, but it turned out he was going the opposite way.
A tip off from Jim suggested C&W, and there we were lucky, they were kind enough to lend us one of theirs, which was big enough.
It was a bit of a struggle nonetheless, and at the bottom of the slope to the trackbed it fell over. It was a bit top heavy, what with a bucket of sand on it as well.
But we got there. Here are the sheets, stacked and ready for use. All sides now have some sort of black coating on them, and another will be applied, once they are in situ.
The PWay gang was working just inside Greet tunnel today, and we got numerous walking visitors who stopped for a chat.
Douggie here admired our handiwork, one of several. Most wanted to know when they could sit in it, especially as the first 100yds of the tunnel are wet, and they don't want to shelter there.
Having got the sheets up there we got on with flaunching the chimney, adding brackets to the inside to hold the structure together, while Yours Truly was on the outside putting on the last of the battens to make the hut draughtproof.
Lunch was taken in the good company of Jim, who preferred to sit with us, rather than in the damp tunnel mouth.
It was Dave who did the flaunching, and some pointing remaining from last week, when we ran out of 'muck'. Check out the base of the chimney pot. Isn't it neat? Battens still have to be fixed to this end (came later in the day)
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| Paul and Dave discuss strategy. |
At the end of the day we caught Paul and Dave discussing the next step.
We still have to fit the joists in their final places, then the roof sheets can go on.
Another job is to fit brackets to the bottoms of the sleepers, to stop them moving around (a very unlikely event, according to Paul, due to their collective weight, but you never know.)
