Day 7 at Usk

And there it was - gone!

Today was the day we finished the demolition (I say, shouldn't that be dismantling?) of the weighbridge hut at Usk. In only 7 working days too, we are veritable demons.

So what do you think of it so far? Hmmm.... these English doughnuts are not as good as the Welsh ones last week, was our considered opinion.
The best bit of the day is always the meet in the morning, with coffee and Paul's doughnuts from Tewksbury.

Then, invigorated, we all spring into life and take on a job of our own.

The walls are nearly down to the ground, but there are two courses below ground still, after the building was backfilled against at some time in its history.

Clive had a concentrated go at the NE corner, which he dug out to prove that there were still dressed stones below the current ground level. At some time, this was above ground, near the bottom of the building.

A different team was busy with the corner where the fireplace was. This is a big lump of rubble and mortar. Under it all was the grate. Eventually this appeared, and here Jules was able to extract the grate itself.

Here Jim has the grate. We decided to call him Alfred. Alfred the Grate - geddit? Made him laugh though.

After Clive's concentrated digging at the NE corner did indeed reveal more dressed stone below ground, Paul took an interest and decided to hammer and chisel away at the first block to try and wriggle it out.

The others were looking at the weighbridge mechanism. We took away the cast iron column, but there was more underneath. But what exactly? We were expecting a sort of inspection tunnel from the column to the underside of the weighing plate. Outside the walls of the building we uncovered an area covered by 4 ft rails (bullhead) and by removing those we saw the tunnel.

Meanwhile, there was a mewing in the yard. It was Tibby, the yard cat.

What is wrong with Tibby the yard cat? She hopped off back to her enclosure, didn't like us to stroke her.

Clive pressed on with his dig, driving on towards the corner of the building.

He was revealing some lovely dressed stonework, once underground.

Dave got out the big SDS drill and tried to meet him from the other side.

The team in the middle - we had several teams, there were nine (!) of us today - took out the floor slabs in the middle of the building. They were made of red sandstone.

The one in the picture is a good one, but several were already smashed into several pieces, so we left those, as transport is at a premium.

Paul had a bit of a bother getting this slab out of the centre of the building, and welcomed the assistance of a 'banker' (the Lickey incline type, not the nasty, money grabbing type, two of which sadly inhabit the team).

The floor slabs were mostly 3 inch thick stone, and this one had a bit of history underneath it - a stone mason's mark. You owe me whole shilling for this, boss!

We prised these slabs out with our shovels.

Once the centre was clear, we used the area to deposit the mortar and small rubble we were digging out.

The tunnel to the weighing table was slowly opened out.

Here is a view down into it.

We were surprised to see that the tunnel was built of concrete, not a 1853 material. It reinforces our feeling that the building was upgraded at some point, say about 1900, possibly with a bigger mechanism, as the surface area of the weighing table was surprisingly large.

In the middle of the tunnel was a cast iron balancing beam.

At the table end of the tunnel was this cast iron construction.

Note that it has been filled in already from the road end.

We only saw the middle bit; there was nothing more we could save from it. The table plate was already taken some time ago.

Lunch. Seven of the nine of us availed ourselves of the burger van man's delicious burger / bacon roll and chips.

Sadly, after several weeks on site, we have developed an us and them mentality. This is now the 'executive dining room'.

Us workers balanced our fragile bottoms on rough crates of Raglan stones on the works site. How we wished for promotion to the executive table, but it was not to be.

Soon it was back to work. And not with a small job either.

Paul wanted us to move the heavy cill from the front window to a better site for loading next week.

It took 6 of us. There seems to be a vacant place on the corner. Come on, blogger! Roll your sleeves up and get stuck in.

Eventually the buried dressed stone and corner quoins were released from their underground hiding place, and propelled to a stillage a few yards away.

They were heavy enough to need the services of a wheelbarrow, with an extra engine on the front.

From the top of the tunnel we released no fewer than 6 old bullhead rails, worth £10-£15 each in scrap.

The web of the rails seems to have attracted quite a few large spiders, bigger than we have seen before. (Don't look now if you don't like spiders)

This one ran up to Paul's boot.

It didn't seem to be frightened at all, it got closer to Paul's boot still.

Then it climbed on top!

We can assure you that this photograph was taken in the micro-second between the spider climbing on Paul's boot, and Paul doing a large leap into the air.....

Meanwhile, Jules had exposed the edge of the original weighing table in front of the building.

This edge is in fact a large cast iron square, which forms a hard border all the way round the original weighing table. But this has gone, apparently removed some considerable time ago, before the current owner had the site (and he has been there for a long time).

Also, the original weighing table, with the plate removed, was filled in and tarmacced over. So other than the fancy edge there isn't much to be recovered. We filled the tunnel in.

What was visible of the tunnel before filling it in.

This long cast iron bar must have been attached to something at each end, but as both ends were filled in, we couldn't see what.

So what we are taking home from the mechanism is just the operating column inside the building, shown earlier.

Near the end of the day, this is what the site looked like. More wooden stillages filled, we reckon another two lorry's worth. Quite a lot of scrap wood, rotten and woodwormed. We are taking home one truss as a sample, and will replace with new.

Having taken out the fire grate and surrounding brickwork, we were left with the hearth underneath.

That would be nice to recover, so Dave had a go with the ole SDS drill here.

Unfortunately it too was split into several pieces, so not worth taking.

The last stone, removed from the hearth with considerable difficulty.

At the end of the day, all useful and reasonably accessible stones had been recovered. Nothing remained above ground. The whole building had been taken down to floor level, and even the floor removed.

An end of job picture of the proud team. If you're not on it, well ya shoulda been there. Or taken the picture.


And now...

Just two more pictures of interest for the amateur archaeologist:

Firstly, this picture of the door and it's frame, which we are taking back. We thought the woodwork of the weighbridge hut was painted GWR chocolate, but of course that reflects only one period.

If you look carefully here, you will see two coats of brown and underneath that, two coats of light and dark stone. So that was the original colour scheme!

Secondly, this concrete base with a few ground off angles in the corner. It's behind the GWR goods shed, which is also on site. Note the little hole in the middle of the base for the middle of the double doors.

This is in fact the concrete base of the corrugated iron hut retrieved from Usk, taken to a member's garden at Toddington, and then installed as a perfect replacement of the waiting room shelter at Hayles Abbey halt.

So this is where it stood at Usk!

Transport:

Our local member Mike was kind enough to volunteer to accompany the second load from Usk to Winchcombe today. It was loaded yesterday afternoon, 11 pallets and stillages in all.

Here is the lorry at it's base in usk, first thing this morning. They have early starts, these lorry drivers.

Driving down from Toddington to Usk, we met the lorry going the other way at Ashchurch. It had almost arrived, not long after we left home.

Soon after the lorry arrived at Winchcombe with this, the second load from Usk.

Here it is stopped on the PWay sidings at the back of the yard.

Stevie was good enough to drop in and unload all the pallets with the company Telehandler.

Two more loads to go!

Plucky Mike agreed to accompany the lorry from Usk to Winchcombe and back, in time for lunch.

What the lorry driver failed to mention though was that he was also going to Yate, and then to Hereford, before returning to Usk. By that time we had finished, and Mike was rather weary after a mystery tour of the West Midlands.




What, where?

There's been a lot of discussion about the exact layout of the new 'Goods Area' of the site, and the final location of the Usk weighbridge hut, soon to be a 'Goods Office'.

Last week Steve cleared the whole site and just about levelled it.

Here is a site inspection team discussing what we need to do with it.

The whole area around the oak tree, currently a waste ground, will be made available to visitors, who will be able to get to it from the end of platform 2.

As you can see the two sidings here diverge from each other. It makes the area behind rather cramped. It was agreed that the siding with the Toad on it be straightened over a stretch of 50-60m. After that, a short goods platform will be built here, which will give the stored goods wagons a purpose. At the same time it will give an area for the Usk stone building to stand on.

The Usk building can be given signage such as Coal Office or Goods Office, surrounded by some barrels, boxes and carts for atmosphere.

So the Usketeers have completely removed the stone building in the goods yard at Usk. A professional job, if we may dare to say. Fifty tons of stone removed and packed in seven days, how's that!

Two of us are now off on our first holiday of 2018, so excuse us if there is a bit of quiet on the blog until the first week in October. In the meantime another expedition will take place to tidy the site, and also to ship the last two lorry loads. You'll have to wait a bit to read about it. Go find a book or something.

Ciao !

Day 6 at Usk

A lovely day today, bright sunshine, not too hot, nine Usketeers met to drink coffee, yak, and eat doughnuts. What a great start to the day.

And special doughnuts too. These were offered by John, as supporter who came along with these Welsh ones.

Dragon flavour, anyone?

With the mortar getting tougher and tougher as we near the ground, we brought an even bigger SDS drill along. Here is project leader Dave giving the southern side a good going over. It's now hard to see the walls, with all the mortar piled up on top. And yet there are two more courses under all that.

Paul picked this corner, which had a huge quoin. Paul, a former builder, always brings a vast quantity of tools. In fact, your blogger's tyre pressures have had to be increased to cope with the extra weight. As per label in the door we are now on Human being+human being+human being+ human being and suitcase+suitcase+suitcase + suitcase+suitcase, except the latter is replaced by buckets of tools, rucksacks, iron bars, a shovel, a mattock, lump hammers etc etc etc. Not forgetting warm doughnuts, which got rather tepid this morning as the taxi service was considerably delayed by schools traffic, and a poorly signed road closure on the Childswickham road.

When the big quoin was eventually coaxed out of its bed it took four of us - half the workforce - to move it about the site, using the rope trick we developed last time.

Here it is being tipped on to the pallet. We made a concerted effort to complete filling the half filled pallets so far, so that they can be taken away by the next lorry visit. That's now scheduled for next Wednesday.

On the northern side - that's the one where the big window overlooking the weighing apparatus was - Peter and Mike dug down and then revealed a slab of concrete in front of the building. As this was hindering the recovery of the stones along that side, they hacked it out. It wasn't actually that hard.

Nonetheless it was felt we were allowed a little pause. As you can see from the full wheelbarrow in front, we continued shoveling at the huge pile of rubble within the walls, in an effort to expose the flagstones that made up the floor.

Mike was on the second, smaller SDS drill and spent the day in the window area where the cast iron column used to stand. What would be underneath it? There must be some sort of crawl space to the underside of the weighing table, where the levers run.

Mike also found this interesting brick. Although we had never heard of it (all those on the GWSR are by Redbank) Mike advised that the brickworks was only just down the road, which made sense. http://www.industrialgwent.co.uk/g11-eastmon/index.htm#pontypool
According to this site, the name Little Mill Brick dates from after 1910, so how it came to be amongst the rubble is a bit of  mystery for us. There were several of them, all broken.

In this picture Bob and Peter can be seen almost half way across the floor area, and with quite an expanse of slabs underneath.
All the larger bits of stone are being picked out and put in the palletised boxes, while the rubble is tipped nearby, ready to be pushed back into the hole when we leave.

With lunch time coming up, Jim started writing down orders for Kelvin, the burger van man.

Seven of us are faithful customers, supplementing the healthy but meagre salads provided by our well meaning spouses.

Dessert was an ice cream cone each!

After a polite 10 minute wait we sauntered up to the burger van to see if our food was ready. It wasn't. The burger van was very popular, and complete meals were being taken away. Patience then.

The rest of the gang beavered away in the background, overlooked by the original GWR goods shed that is still there, fully intact. It's almost exactly the same as the several ones on the GWSR.

After lunch we needed a round of drinks, as the sun was still hot enough to make you thirsty. This is almost all of the gang today: Julian, Paul, Bob, Dave (project leader) Peter, Jim and Clive.

Absent today:
Paul (he of the cool shades last week, a victim of backache from gardening, of all things )
Doug: he of the whole bag of doughnuts last week. Too much of a good thing then?

After lunch we resumed. Paul liked digging out the big quoins, and here he is with another.

Anybody want to help lift it? Anybody at all?

Eventually a gang was cajoled into carrying it away, slung to a bar.

We made a special effort today to finish off the various half built pallet fulls, so that they can go next week, full up. The first load, experience shows, was slightly under weight, so it's OK to pile them a bit higher.
Then the shrink wrap film goes round.

Most of the visible stones were removed from the southern side today, although we believe there is another row underneath.
We also made a start on demolishing the tower of rubble in the corner, which was the support for the fireplace. We haven't found it yet though, maybe next week. Too much rubble heaped on top.

Clive made a start on lifting the flagstones that made up the floor. They came away fairly easily, but were nearly all cracked.

Odd that, considering only people walked across them. But that sandstone is very soft.

On the front wall we got down to ground level when Mike reported that it felt a bit hollow. We dug further and found that we were standing on bullhead rails. Clive, member of the Permanent Way Institute, pronounced that they were of a style that was later than the construction of the line and weighbridge hut, hence were put there afterwards. They were covered by a row of blues, which is also not contemporary with the stone built weighbridge. The whole thing was covered in a layer of concrete with yellow chippings in it, a material not from this area.

Aren't we archaeologists ?

A peer between the rails found a shallow tunnel with a cast iron beam, a child's bicycle wheel and an oil can. Maybe open it out next week?

Here is the overview at the end of the day. It looks like a bomb has hit the poor old weighbridge. There's rubble all round, and several flagstones have been pulled up. As we are putting away the tools, Dave is wrapping the pallets in the background.

There are now 7 ready for transport next week, plus a whole load of boxes filled with irregular stones.

Here they are - we filled another 6 today, say three tons again. Ouch ! We are beginning to think we need a rest, which could coincide with some of us going on holiday in the second half of the month.

Three tons isn't counting the pallets with the dressed stone and quoins, please note.






History corner

Today there's a picture of Usk tunnel, 234m long and cut through red sandstone, the stuff that the weighbridge was built with. It's therefore not unreasonable to suppose that the material we are knocking down originally came from inside the tunnel.

The tunnel was located immediately next to the station, evidence of how constricted the site was, and why they had to build the goods yard on the other side of two roads and a river.

You can still walk through it, it forms part of a footpath here, which enables you to do a circular tour encompassing a part of the high street. It's very pretty.




Finally, note also that the bridges blog has been updated, with news of Broadway and plans for further bridge repair projects.
http://bridgestobroadway.blogspot.com/2018/09/work-starts-at-broadway.html