Chimney works.

With the Friday gang at Gotherington South 

Five of us, a little specialised team at Gotherington, to swap out the crossing, without the usual large crowd implied with the full gang working on this one.

 

 

The same 5 also screwed down a number of base plates, until the drill got jammed in one of the holes - typically, the sort of thing that happens when you think you are doing really well.

It took ages to get the drill bit back out, with the limited small tools we had with us. 

 

 

 

 

 

STEVIE then lifted the new crossing close to its position.

The old one was unacceptably worn. The new one also has an improvement, in that it is slightly inclined, to fin into the curve in which it sits. The old one was flat, having come from elsewhere.

 

 

 

 

 

As you can probably see from the picture above, the new crossing is longer than the old one, so two rails had to be cut to make it fit.

 

Dave D, looking like a pirate with an eye patch, heaved this baby sideways with a bar. 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the new crossing, inscribed with an addressee, and the inclination that it has. It is fitted temporarily on to the old timbers - the replacement of the old timbers is currently at the half way stage, with about 10 being done per day (out of 53 in total).

 

 

 

With the other rails cut to size, STEVIE was able to lift in the new crossing. The fit was perfect!

As STEVIE needs to get across the turnout on his way to CRC the next day, the crossing was attached temporarily. Just enough for the RRV to cross. 

 

 

 

 

The crossing was fly fished at one end, and this end, still loose, will have a set of temporary plates and clamps fitted before Saturday.

The GWSR is a rural railway (when not encroached by compulsory housing estates growing like mushrooms) and we were amused by this farmer's wife, who walked into the middle of a field (a flock of ewes being on the far side) but no further, and rattled a bucket of sheep nuts. The ewes promptly gambled over, and she led them out of this field into the next one. They never got the sheep nuts !

Or how to corral sheep, if you haven't got a sheepdog. 

Clever stuff.

Before fitting the temporary fish plates, we tested the connection with one set of wheels of STEVIE. No probs there, they rolled straight across.

The above was all recorded with the new Blogger camera. It worked OK, it's just a bit more cumbersome at home when uploading the result onto the desktop. The camera is waterproof, so all the connections are hidden behind a cover that is rather difficult to open. We worked it out in the end, as you can see.

 

Prior to joining the gang at Gotherington, we were asked to show a wood carver and a welder around the shed at Toddington. They are preparing for a Honeybourne line artistic commission, and wanted to get to know our railway.

Here they are, looking at two of the three columns for P21 at Broadway, which Neal is preparing in the loco shed (attaching steel plates top and bottom).

They were thrilled by what we had achieved. They had never seen a shed full of steam engines before. You forget how normal we think this is, working here, and seeing the old kettles most days.

This picture was done with the phone camera, so still has that aura. Sadly, the mild acid solution to cement dust didn't work in our case. We tried. Thanks though for suggesting it. We'll probably work with a combination of the two.

 

 

Monday at Toddington.

More work on the steels for Broadway. But last Wednesday Neal and John had a successful day's block laying in the 'Gents' at the south end of the building.

How did they do?

 

 

 

Well, they built the interior block wall to within one course of the top. 

The fireplace side now needs to follow, in the Thermalite ones. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a shot from inside the 'Gents' upwards, to show how high they got.

One more course of blocks to go here then. 

 

 

 

Seen from the outside, it becomes clear that we still need to put in the last window, and that depends on the specials that we ordered.

The weather remains very disturbed still, so brick laying will be hit and miss for a while yet. 

 

At Toddington:

Work was going on to remove redundant BT phone wires, and associated telegraph poles. 

This will improve the look of the area, provided that the CCTV camera isn't screwed to our historic building instead.

 

Outside the loco shed it was good to see the 'Bubble Car' getting an airing. 

It's had a lot of work done to it, most recently fault finding and rectification. There is no official news of an entry to service, but 2026 looks like the year (fingers crossed)

 

The purpose of the visit to Toddington was to work on the stanchions for Broadway, which need to go to galvanising soon. Despite being 'in the greenhouse' they have gone rusty. Surprise! It is actually damp under that glass, and the wind blows the rain in. Luckily the galvanisation process can stand a little light rust, but we took off what we could. Under the rust were still some traces of millscale, so we took that off too, at least on one of them. Two more to go.

The next pictures are a little out of focus, as we are still getting accustomed to the new camera. It looks like the shutter speed was set too low for indoors, so apologies for that.

 

 

 

Neal here can be seen preparing the base plates for the bottoms of the stanchions. He put the tops on earlier.

The bases too were covered in millscale, which is what he is grinding off here. 

 

 

 

 

 

Yours truly cleaned all three stanchions of surface rust, and then the LH one of millscale.

Two more to go, for next time. 

 

 

 

Wednesday with the Usketeers.

Up to full strength today, with three on site.

Surprise: We are about to be joined by a fourth, a repentant Julian, who is coming back, after 'going on furlough' during the Usk hut build. People are very welcome to return once personal circumstances change again, but they do have to jump through a number of administrative hoops first.

Maybe we will see him next week? In any case, we already prepared a fourth chair for him, both on site, and in the weighbridge. Julian is great company.

 

 

 

The Usketeers had a heavily loaded wheelbarrow to take up to the tunnel, so maybe Walt in STEVIE would do us a favour?

We waited at the 'bus stop'.

 

Next to us the team from C&M was attending to another sink hole in the platform. What on earth did they use to fill it, back in the day? (1989) 

 

Walt did indeed help us. Here we are, back on site. The fireplace looks quite substantial, but much of this is the back curtain, which is going to rise right up to the roof, to give the adjoining sleepers a straight wall to abut on.

Around us on Wednesday was a crashing and whirring noise - our contractor with a remote control flail, strimming the sides of the cutting. 

(this is a phone picture, hence the halo) 

 

 

 

 

 

Now the contractor has moved above the tunnel mouth, while Paul and Dave start on the corbelling inwards, to form the chimney above the fireplace. 

 

 

 

About 11am a certain need for tea arose, so we sat down on 3 of the 4 chairs that we had. Julian's is waiting - will he get his permit by next week? 

Then we resumed brick laying, using the reclaimed reds from Winchcombe station yard.

We actually have two brick layers on the job. 

From this picture you can see that we have finished the fireplace as such, and are starting on corbelling towards the chimney proper.

We are now quite a way above the arch that we placed last week, and indeed the former was taken away today. (the arch stayed up, in case you ask)

Yours Truly kept himself busy by digging out the area in front of the 'verrandah'.

This had been dug out before, but had succumbed to subsidence. We found a few souvenirs in it; bits of glass bottle, and a valve for a Tilley lamp.

We've been offered a grindstone, which could historically be justified to be placed here. PWay workers would have sharpened their scythes on it.

Near the end of the afternoon Paul was working on the rear curtain wall. You can see how the corbelling is reducing towards the future chimney stack.

A little detail shot to show how the rear curtain wall is being raised, to meet the sides of the sleeper that will stand here.

Then it was time to come home, and we passed the flail, now working on the lower levels.

Next time: The story of how we spotted two GWR lamp posts on TV ! What to do? Can we find them? Where are they? Are they for sale at all?

The new bricks arrive.

Saturday, out with the gang at CRC south.

And it was a big gang this time, 16 of us. 

 

The first thing was to load a new soleplate on the RRV, which was waiting at Winchcombe.

Then 4 of us grabbed the black Ranger, and headed for original CRC booking office, where Nick was waiting with tea for all of us.

Also plenty of sweet goodies.... 

 

Here we would like to apologise for the misty appearance of the photographs in this blogpost. It seems that the phone camera lens was badly affected by cement dust that had crept into our jacket pocket, while making up the mixes at the platelayer's hut last Wednesday. Cleaning the lens didn't help, it looks like a gonner. Rather than buy a whole new phone, we're going to try a pocket camera again, something dustproof that doesn't mind the dusty, oily and full of shocks and knocks sort of activity that we do.

At CRC, Kev had to climb back over the pointwork that was largely laid in last week. L and R are the check rail lengths that still need to go in.

 

On his way to the heel of the turnout Kev stopped to to some tweaking. It need pulling towards the Malvern side by an inch or two. No longer possible by men on bars, now that all that weight is on it.

 

Half of the gang then continued screwing down the central section of the steelwork, while the other half was at the heel end, where the new soleplate was being fitted.

Why a brand new soleplate? It turns out that the old one was short, and did not continue under the point motor.

From the empty ferrules you can see that this end also still needs screwing down. 

During the week there was an unwelcome arrival at our worksite - this party helium ballon. There are entire shops dedicated to selling these things, and people buy them without thinking through the disposal consequences. Once you let them go, the rise into the air - and come down again, to become plastic litter. They end up in cattle fields, under hedgerows, in other people's gardens and - on our Cotswolds railway line.

Please don't buy them. 

With Kev at the southern end of the site, STEVIE could lift in the check rail lengths. The loop rail that we turned to one side was then clipped back into place.

Here's an interim shot of progress, as thoughts turned to lunch time.

Looks pretty complete, doesn't it? 

Lunch was taken inside the original booking office, now downgraded to a paint shop and volunteer tea room.

There was a brief ray of sunshine, but those black clouds over Cleeve Hill tell you why we sat indoors. 

At the Tunnel end we put back the single rail that we took out to let Kev trundle back and forth, retrieving components from the two flat wagons waiting beyond.

The pair of rails that we also took out was now too long, as we had installed a longer (less sharply curved) turnout. In the picture David and Peter are measuring what length of rail is required to fill the now shorter gap. 

David then cut both rails to size, watched by Tony from a distance. The day remained gloomy...

Picture by David

The single rail that we removed had a duff concrete sleeper under it. It was quite surprising how bad it was. One end was halved in thickness, leaving just an island underneath the rail.

Or, as one correspondent put it, 'it's holding gauge at one end, that should be enough' !

We swapped that one out, with the 360 being nearby. 

Picture by David

Here it is, fully extracted. You can see that weird 'island' bump at one end. Could it have been put in like that, 26 years ago? 

Kev laid in the last two lengths of plain rail, which David had cut to length. Then he extracted himself from the site, now rahter more difficult, with all those rails in the way.

At least the new turnout is now all in. There's a bit more drilling to do, then it's ballasting and packing next week. 

As an extra treat this week, here are a couple of drone shots of the work site, taken by Paul:

 

You can also see how close to the road the original GWR booking office now is.

We could see little evidence of further work on the new cycle path, in the 4 weeks that we have been here. The 4 pilaster caps are still oustanding, and the scaffolding round the bridge is still there. 

This view was taken mid afternoon, as Kev was about to put back the two lengths of plan rail.

At the other end is STEVIE, having just put back the check rail lengths.
 

 

Monday at Broadway.

A damp day, but with block laying possibilities, so we gave it a go.

The good news is that the specials we ordered from Ibstock in Bristol have at last arrived, pretty much in the 8 - 12 week time frame that they said. It's been too cold to lay any bricks anyway.

The label says it all: HEAVY - 1000Kg. So we have ordered the classic tonne of bricks.

Investigation under the plastic revealed that there is a small issue, in that 20 of the specials that we ordered single handed have arrived as 10 pairs. So we are 10 short, and have 10 over. John will negotiate with the company to see what can be done.

The others look fine. They look very new, especially when against one of the existing ones that we have, which have spent at least 10 years out in the open, and now have blemishes. But the colour is what we ordered, we'll have to see the effect on the day. It would be a miracle if they were exactly the same, we would expect a slight variation in the colour. But we noticed that the ones we already have do also vary between themselves slightly in the colour.

We won't be using them straight away (before you ask...) as our current objective is to finish the store room (ex Gents) so that we have a roof over our heads, somewhere to stand in the dry, and somewhere to keep our kit. 

 

In other news Peter K has made and fitted a nice set of handrails down to the SB locker room. This is at the request of one of our safety officers.

They look plausible. We had a little debate amonst ourselves as to what would look acceptable, and we think we did OK. The curve over the blue plinth was an issue, and we think that Peter handled that admirably.

Interestingly, the catch for the gate, attached to the box, has had to be moved down a couple of inches. This is because the gate post is on made up ground (the platform) and the box is on piles.

 

During the day John laid concrete blocks, with a mix-and-a-half.

That gave three courses of blocks, bringing the total laid to eight so far. Twelve courses takes us up as far as we need - then there will be joists for the roof. The 'Gents' was not covered by the canopy but was originally open. At Toddington, and now at Broadway, the Gents will have an internal (not visible) slightly sloping flat roof. The roof will be slightly lower than the rest of the building. (see below)

 

 

 

For comparison, we have included this colourised crop of a very early Broadway picture, possibly from 1904, the opening year. It's certainly early, because in the background you can see a small wooden building with a pitched roof beyond the end of the platform. That was the first signal box. It only lasted a few months, until the final one by the road bridge was opened.

Behind the lamp post you can see a white lintel over a door. Above it a white stripe - that indicates the height of the open toilet at the time. 

In the foreground is the P2 running in board and a cast iron post on its side. They have not yet been fitted, we think because they wanted the made up ground to settle. It is still settling today, our replacement board and lamp posts are also leaning backwards a bit.

Under the canopy, outside the waiting room, is an all wooden bench. We have that - currently in store on P1.

The WAY OUT sign is also made up and ready to go - currently in the blogger garage. 

The platform surface is only partly paved, that is how they did it in those days. Our platforms however are fully tarmacced, except under the canopy, where we will have paving. Not authentic, but we get way more people on a platform.

 

Lastly, a shot from inside. The wall separating Gents from the main room has concrete blocks on one side, and lightweight blocks on the inside (as well as insulation between them).

This was what it looked like as it began to get dark. 

 

Blogger camera. 

A new, dustproof camera is on order, BTW. It has to last as long as my phone (2 years old), so we didn't spend too much and bought Chinese.

See if it works, later in the week. It says 'Water and dust proof', so we will certainly test that. But is it cement proof?

 

With the Usketeers.

Dave is back ! Feeling better, thank goodness. We did miss him. He knows how to handle Maxie! We pulled and pulled and pulled last week, but couldn't get her to start (we hadn't actually switched her on...)

 

 

No problems with starting this week then. Except that petrol was low, and Dave had taken the can home, and forgot to bring it back full. So we would start Maxie, run her for 1 minute, then shut her down again. In this frugal way we got three mixes out of her, and a drum cleaning run. Phew!

 

It was an excellent day today: the weather was good, the company was pleasant, and Paul started on the arch over the fireplace. Here he is, testing the layout of the blues.

 

STEVIE passed us, early on, on his way to Gotherington. Two grinning faces at the window; we waved back cheerfully.

 

While Dave and Paul built up the fireplace, Yours Truly took the opportunity of laying second hand blocks (scavenged from Winchcombe yard) on the concrete base laid last week.

This was the result - pretty good, huh? Nice and straight. Just a broken block on the left to repair, and filling in the holes with concrete.

These blocks, rebuilt as they were, hold back the terrain behind, into which the concrete base was laid by BR in the 1950s. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A bit later, and Paul and Dave had completed the arch, and were laying a row of reds over the top.

 

Tailored with a builder's trowel to fit. 

 

Lunch was held back at the base (the Winchcombe weighbridge), and on the way back we stopped to collect some more concrete blocks from the yard.

A pause for breath.

They were jolly heavy, having been used by someone else before, and filled with concrete. We only managed two this time; there are two more back in the yard.

 

The thought here is that we would like to build up some steps leading to the new hut's concrete base. At the moment the 'veranda' ends in a rather slippery slope, with broken concrete bits on it.

 

 

A bit later Paul had built another two courses over the arch. Thoughts were turning towards corbelling back, and starting to form the chimney.

 

 

 

Another view of the fireplace, now towards the end of the day.

Our pile of reds on the right is looking rather empty. What happened to all those bricks? We will need to get some more. 

 

The last shot of the day is a little overview of the site as were were about to leave it. It's getting dark, and with it there is a sharp drop in the temperature.

 

The blogger camera continues to take pictures with an aura round it, but Chinese help arrived at the close of play. We shall play with the new toy, and report next week.