Interim update.

Interim update.

As readers must have guessed, a blogger needs to have a break to keep his sanity. We spent 14 days away from the GWSR, in the totally different Trento region, and then in Lombardy. Next week we're away too, so the blog post following this one is likely to be on the Wednesday after (i.e. in about 10 days).

 

The Usketeers motored on nonetheless.

Well, for the following week, the week after that they took a holiday too. It's the season. So here is the work from 10 days ago.

 

 

 

The week before we lifted the tilting cabin using bars and blocks. The next time Dave, Paul and Julian borrowed some Duff jacks to lift the cabin higher still, and then rested it on the two sleper offcuts we had left over from the lineside hut.

The idea was to free up the sunken foundation blocks on the two front corners, and build them up with bricks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here you can see Paul doing just that. The first course of bricks is already down.

 

 

 

 

The next idea was to get some decent second hand sleepers, and use one to support the rotten frame at the front.

Station owner Bryan was very helpful, and gave us a couple of good second hand spares that he had, and even a trolley on which to drag them across the site. 

 Here they are on arrival, a bit puffed out after the long drag from the other side of the house.

 

Steam was on again, so there was also the chance for a quick snap of a real train going by.

 

 

 

With the two front corners built up again, the intention was to slip the sleeper on top of the corners, and under the rotten frame. The vertical panels are not so good either, and may well get replaced entirely, but as a start we cut off the bottoms to get the sleeper under.

Thanks to C&M we have been able to obtain some lengths of second hand timber, that formerly held up their old workshop, until it was knocked down earlier this year. 

We don't envisage spending much, if any, money on this rebuild. 

 

 

 

Finally, success! The sleeper is under the frame, and on top of the higher corners.

The wreckage in the foreground is from Bryan's own attempts to righten the cabin. 

 That success deserved a coffe break. Even a failure deserved a coffee break - we like coffee breaks.

 

Dave took this lovely shot of the blue Growler coming into Gotherington.

The last shot is a frontal one, showing the sleeper in place, on the new brick supports. The SB name plate (home made by Bryan) is off, with a view to refreshing the T&G down the front.

Greet tunnel.

 

There's a debate going on about the missing date stones on the portals of Greet tunnel, the second longest in the UK preservation world.

 

Here's a picture of the current situation, taken from the new lineside hut. The date stone has fallen out of its socket, probably in bits over several years. The bits we found on the ground are of soft, Cotswolds stone, it's just crumbled.

 

We would like to replace the date stones with new, better quality examples. The trouble is that we have never seen a photograph of either tunnel portal, showing them in place. Can anybody help with an old photograph?

 

In particular, we don't know which date Greet tunnel actually carried. Hunting Butts was 1906, so is it safe to assume Greet was 1905? Winchcombe was opened in 1905; Bishops Cleeve in 1906. 

Then there's money of course. The company doesn't have any, so it's not in anyone's budget. If there is enough interest, we could try an appeal on the blog? Are you interested?

 

 

Work at Broadway.

Neal and John have also been busy over the last 14 days.

 

 

 

People may have noticed on the CCTV camera that there was a pile of specials on the corner of the scaffolding. Now it's gone.

 

 

 

This is where that pile of specials went - it made up the missing fourth row of corbels along the back. The upside down curve is the last row. Another job ticked off.

 

 

 

 

And, o miracle, Neal managed to heave the incredibly heavy last fascia board at the back into place. He was assisted in that by some members of the Broadway maintenance gang.

 

 

 

The reason for the delayed fitting was here - the board had to be cut to fit around the corbelling brickwork.

 

 

 

 

And, to our astonishment, we found that Neal and a small group from the loco department had actually started riveting. This is the north end of that same fascia board. It's going nowhere, with all those rivets in it now. The corresponding temporary bolts have been removed. Some were so old that they had already been used for the same job on the P1 station building.

 

 

In the same corner we also see the brace that was fitted. This will stop the steel structure from flexing. It's not original, but necessary due to the change in the way the structure is now held up. Not by the brick walls of the building itself, but by an internal steel cage, hidden inside the walls.

 

 

 

Here is another that hasn't been fitted yet. A number of holes have to be drilled in it first, and also on the fascia bioard, for the rivets to go in.

 

 

 

 

Isn't this a fine example of the old fashioned riveting that our building has! A passing visitor on Friday remarked that Broadway was the most beautiful station building that he knew. Let's keep it that way, let's respect the 1904 date and our living museum vocation.

 

 

 

Later on Friday Neal was measuring up for some frame extensions, and to illustrate a question about the braces at the staircase end, Neal produced this little drawing. It will be made of angle iron, to a sort of butterfly shape.

 

 

 

 

This is where that butterfly shape will go, in between the two columns at the bottom of the steps. A half butterfly has already been fitted on the right, and two more will go in on the left.

 

 

Neal has also made 4 frame extension pieces, two for each end of the building, where the purlins stop. These will support the wooden boarding at the end. They now need de-rusting, priming and painting. 

 

 

The north end has both extensions fitted, the south end one of the two. A third piece will come off the ridge (the purpose of Neal's plywood drawing...)

 

More riveting could take place next Wednesday (Yours Truly is on another railway next week) and Neal reports that there are still a few more holes that need drilling.

 

Painting is likely to become more difficult as we enter autumn, due to the heavy rain that is forecast for the last quarter. We are conteplating making an early start on the roofing in one corner, to get a dry working area. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PWay last week.

 

There was lineside work on Wednesday and Friday, of which Paul kindly sent us some photographs.

 

 

 

The job was at Laverton, a bit beyond the concrete rail over road bridge. We seem to get regular undulations on the Malvern side, and indeed prior to opening a small slip was repaired here.

 

This is the 'before'. 

 

On the same day the Peak passed the work site. Gang numbers are a bit low at the moment, due to the summer holidays.

 

 

 

 Paul tried a bit of an artistic shot; you can just about make out two guys using Robels to pack the track (possibly Bob and Simon?)

 

 

Afterwards, and with a cheerier sky, the track was level again.

Until the next time. 

 

Due to the higher (concrete replacement) bridge there is more ballast here than usual, and this may be weighing down the side of the trackbed that has track on it.

 

After our exceptionally dry summer, we are monitoring the track carefully to detect any signs of slippage on our embankments. The Bishops Cleeve slip was detected late last year as a long crack, which with heavy rain running into the crack during the winter, did indeed turn into a slip. 

 

Clay embankments - that's the nature of our line. 

 

 

We also had sleeper changing south of the tunnel. That's an old section of track, now long on second hand woods from the early 1990s. We keep having to come back to it, until it gets exchanged for concrete sleepers. One day... the list of jobs is long.

 

 

 This sleeper doesn't look too bad, but our track patrollers are very vigilant, and it's coming out.

 

 

The replacement area was then Robelled. We use these machines a lot, and are seeing more failures in the 4 that we have. Currently we are down to just two.

 

 

 

The reward for sleeper changing was the sight of 3850 chugging hard out of the tunnel. It's uphill, until 500yds behind the camera, then level on a long embankment through Gretton.

 

 

 

 

Last but not least, a plug for the friends of Pilley Bridge nature reserve. It's a kilometre long nature reserve on what used to be the Cheltenham - Banbury line. It's in the heart of the souhern part of Cheltenham. 

 

Maybe drop in for a visit next Sunday?