A breakthrough on bricks?

The special bricks saga.

All of the bricks used on P2 at Broadway were ordered about 10 years ago, in anticipation of building the waiting room that never came, until the canopy gang took it on. 

The bricks were ordered from a supplier some distance away. We think we have enough plain stretchers, but are short of 4 types of the specials, notably those at the base and sides of the windows, where square bricks convert into a round column. It has taken three months to be provided with a sample that was not the right shade, and finally the information that:

- The kiln that fired our original specials is closed down.

- A replacement kiln won't operate until 2026 at the earliest.

- It is not known if the new kiln will handle specials, nor what the colour and finish will be then.

Such a reply after 10 years is not entirely surprising, but the frustration in the team is that it took so long to get. We have lost 3 months, and we will just have to double up to get all the bricks laid before the roof structures is lifted in, at the end of the current operating season.

The better news is that we have approached a local brickworks, and early indications are that they can make us the specials that we need, in a shade that comes close to what we had. We must accept that we will never get an exact match, as the original kiln has closed down.

We are about to receive a box of sample bricks, from which we can make the final selection, and, after payment - it won't be cheap -  the production delay, including a carpenter making one off moulds, is 6 to 8 weeks. Not too bad, in the circumstances.

So we are now hopeful that the bricks impasse has been resolved. 

 

Wednesday, without the Usketeers.

Your blogger spent Monday to Wednesday in Southwest Wales, so the Usketeers were left alone to play.

They decided to make a gate for the top corner of the building, as it was felt that the neighbour's dog could escape from their garden that way.

The style in which Paul made it was the same as that for the adjoining fence, which the neighbour had recently renewed. The gate was attached to the fence corner post, only the hook is attached to the building itself.

Paul made a very neat job, as you can see.

 

 

 

 

The passage left around the building when the adjoining land was sold in the 1980s is extremely narrow, barely a boot wide. It's almost impossible to walk in there.

The FoWS and Yours Truly treated and removed several brambles that had started from the area as well. We don't want a big knot of spikey brambles to make it even more difficult.

 

 

 

Afterwards Paul and Dave treated themselves to a ride on the train, seen here at CRC.

Next week - setting out the ACO drain. 

 

 

 

We also have a little question.

When the old Building & Services shed was knocked down in the yard at Winchcombe, and old reciprocating electric saw was revealed in the corner 

 

It hasn't been touched in years; mechanical condition therefore unknown.

Andy, our PWay man who saws and prepares our rail ends for sale, has raised several £000s for our tool fund that way. However, he frequently has to bother someone in the steam dept to have particular bits cut to size. He wonders if there is anyone out there who would like to take the old saw on, and make it functioning and electrically safe? Then Andy and his rail end business could be independent.

If you think you'd like to help, get in touch via the blog.

 

 

A look over the fence - Welland Steam Fair.

The GWR Trust (our supporting charity) had a stand at the Welland Steam Fair over Friday to Sunday. Yours Truly was part of the Sunday crew. 

We had never been to Welland before. The site was huge; the visibilty low.... not only from the hundreds of traction engines there, but from the dust pounded up by heavy lorries, motorbikes, tractors, steam engines and a tank going round. We came home with shoes that looked as if we'd taken a stroll in the sahara desert.Well, better than three days of constant rain.

 

Wanna volunteer? John tells it like it is.

We had a well equipped gazebo, but there was little of real interest to the enthusiast, just tables with flyers about the railway, the viaduct, the Cotswolds Halt, the trust, legacies, young volunteering. All the right stuff, you'd say, but was it interesting?

What saved us was a very generous donation of die cast toy vehicles, many in their original boxes, which we were allowed to sell for anything that we could get for them. This made passing punters stop and look, whereupon we could engage them in conversation. We took £140 on the Friday (Saturday not recalled) and on the Sunday we took £177, with quite a few items still in stock. We felt very pleased with this rather unexpected extra income, and it made all our hard work of lugging the kit around and setting up so much more worthwhile.

As we can't rely on spontaneous kind donations of stock for sale, it would be an idea next year - we will surely be there again, last weekend in July - to bring other items for sale from the trust's bric-a-brac collection.  Anything to put on tables outside, to catch the eye, and start a conversation.

 

 

 

The show ground was basically a farm, a short distance from the Malverns, which you can see quite close by in this picture.

There was a splendid collection of motorbikes, many of which later went round the arena. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Except this one - maybe too nice? It was a stunning Vincent HRD, polished to within an inch of its life.

What a fabulous motorbike. 

 

 

 

 

Nearby was a genuine standard gauge railway. It was laid with military rail, and looked as if it had been there more than one season.

A locomotive and a converted goods van were giving rides to about a quarter of a mile away. The locomotive was HAWARDEN, a 1940 Bagnall 0-4-0, currently at the Foxfield railway, and a good advertisement for them. 

 Every now and then it need more coal, and this was loaded by hand from plastic bags.

 

 

 

Occasionally there would be an opportunity for members of our team to see the sights, and during one of these exploratory trips we had a conversation with Neil Jones here, a free miner from the Forest of Dean. He stood by an impressive pile of freshly mined coal at his feet.

Why didn't the Forest of Dean free miners supply the British heritage railway industry with coal, as we were crying out for it, and importing from Colombia, 5500 miles away?

The answer seems to be that they are too small in number, and wouldn't be able to satisfy the demand. Which is a shame, as it would have fitted so beautifully. 

 

 

 

The arena, near to the GWRT gazebo, regularly held displays of interesting vehicles, by group.

 

 

The first group was about heavy haulers. 

This one is the famous Diamond T, one of the heavy tank transporters.

One of our members - Ivor Dixon - used to drive these:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/73536293@N02/27033528989/in/album-72157688740063491 

 

 

 

 

Another tank transporter was the mighty Thorneycroft ANTAR, which Ivor also drove in the army:

 https://www.flickr.com/photos/73536293@N02/38092975934/in/album-72157688740063491

You can see the start of the dustbath that these circulating heavies started to throw up.  

 

 

 

A lighter moment was provided by steam:

This was an actual steam car - we don't know the make - which hissed by, with a cloud of steam emerging underneath.

 

 

 

Opposite our gazebo was a rather nice road roller, not too polished up.

This was an Aveling & Porter, from Rochester in Kent, works no 7857.

It was built in 1912. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Its crew were relaxing at the back end.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another Aveling & Porter nearby, no 8471 of 1914, is getting a bit more polish. This one's a 2cyl compound, and has a very large and loud whistle (we can testify). Is it off a steam locomotive?

 

 

 

 

 There was a fascinating area of militaria as well.

 The bulk of this immaculate Scammell impressed us. We think it's an Explorer, from the 1950s.

 At the other end of the scale was this lovely first world war vehicle from the US:

It's a LOCOMOBILE, with solid tyres and wooden spokes! It was produced in 1913. 

 

The number of traction engines attending the rally was amazing (didn't have time to check out the funfair, which had its own row of showman's engines, and an 'electric boat' ).

Here is a selection: 

 

 

 

 

This one was working a sawmill. It was in beautiful condition, with a lovely steady beat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was a 1909 Foster 'Old Smokey', giving rides around the grounds.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was a big one, weighing in at 14 tons.

It was built in 1920, and is named 'ROB ROY'.

It's a twin cylinder compound. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As this was a steam rally there were no cars - except this immaculate Ford model T.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The day as a volunteer in the green GWRT gazebo (top right) was not 'all work, and no play'.

Providing there was cover, we could take half an hour off here and there, and even buy a round of ice creams!

This is a well known volunteer from the steam dept at Toddington, Theresa. 

Hurry up, before they melt! 

 

 

 

 

There was even a traditional Punch & Judy show, with lots of children watching.

'Im just going to go downstairs and tidy up my bedroom. You all enjoy doing that, don't you?'

' Noooooooo !!! ' 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The Welland site is vast, a whole farm's worth of fields. 

 

This gives you a small idea of what area it covers. The field was used for demonstrations of ploughing etc, and also for the work of construction machinery to one side

Here's plodding Field Marshall raking the earth, which was being ploughed up again by a massive Caterpillar tractor just off camera. 

 

 

 

 

Temporarily paused was the lower partner of a pair of ploughing engines, equipped with a big winding drum underneath.

This pulls a plough, or as here a harrow, back and forth across a large field. 

 

 

 

 We also missed out on a gun battle between troops of two different WW2 armies.

It all looked very realistic. This German trench had a machine gun, a Kettenkrad, a derailed wagon and a short stretch of twisted track, apparently hit by a bomb. 

In the construction machinery area holes were being dug all day long, as here with an old fashioned dragline and a ten wheeler. It was interesting to see how the bucket was manoeuvered by means of ropes and gravity.

At the end of the day it was all filled in again, ready for next year. 

 

 

 

 

On a smaller scale was this narrow gauge line, also a permanent fixture by the look of it, which ran alongside a road that was being rolled with a steam roller. 

 

 

 

 

The hillside also saw another sawmill, this one equipped with an additional engine and crane ( a Ransomes), to lift the heavy logs into place.

The saw bench and its huge, menacing saw blade was called 'The Rippitt', rather appropriately, we thought.

For us the best part of the day came as we were breaking down the gazebo, when we suddenly heard a sputtering roar from the main arena neaby.

We don't have a picture, but there is a film: 

 https://youtu.be/8mxS0e4jGrY

It shows a Chieftain (Centurion?)  based Armoured Recovery Vehicle (a tank without a turret) with a badly tuned engine crushing two cars that had strayed into the main arena.

It's what you get, if you don't follow the marshalls...

We can't say much about the ARV, except that it was called 'DAVE', and, we heard, got itself stuck down a deep trench earlier (it was a three day event), much to the glee of those operating heavy recovery vehicles.

And finally: 

The RATs trust had a largeish black plastic box behind their sales shed at Toddington. It was recently obtained (at a cost!) and was meant to house donated articles for sale, a sort of buffer stock.

But after just a couple of weeks behind the RATs shed it vanished. 

Has anyone reading this taken it, thinking it wasn't being used? Please give it back ! 

Downpipes complete.

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.) 

The item here was a sighting of whitish ballast, a sign of pumping. This was a bit puzzling. We have 8 ins of bottom ballast here, and frequent tamping, and yet there is pumping. 

We watched a train go over to confirm the movement, then we Robelled several sleepers around the spot.

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. 

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.

 

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.