Usk work starts at Winchcombe

Day one of work to rebuild the Usk weighbridge hut at Winchcombe. This coincided with the return of your blogger from the wilds of Sicily, so you get a report again. Welcome back !

Where were we?

Well, all the material recovered from Usk has now been brought to Winchcombe, so there are shrink wrapped pallets standing about the yard.

The whole site around the oak tree will be made fit for visitors to see, reachable off the end of P2. At the moment the site is a bit of a tip. The steels from a mezzanine floor have already been removed, and Stevie has levelled off the site as well as he could already, so we can see where we are.

The idea is to have a demonstration goods area here, with a few interesting wagons, and the Usk building rebuilt, say as a coal or goods office, with some barrows and old barrels scattered about.
To make the area level and to give it shape, we will build a short platform to the left of the TOAD. However, the way the siding was laid is not ideal, so we are going to straighten it a bit by moving the end to the right. This will give more room on the left.

Here's the left hand side, all rubble falling into the siding tracks. 
We may be looking for a supply of engineering imperial blues, so if you have any suggestions, do say. (the excesses left at Broadway have been sold)

Next to the planned removal of the siding, we also had a PWay gang out at Laverton on fault fixing (mostly loose clips), and to start with we all had a good sniff round our new arrival, a second Landie 110. Our budget was small and we looked for a vehicle that 'needed a bit of work doing to it' and this is exactly what we got. It has a year's MOT, but there are several little niggles to sort out. Luckily, we have some Landie skills in house, one of the reasons we went for another of the same type.

This one doesn't have rail wheels, but it does have a stereo system! It still needs testing....

One of the niggles was a couple of leaking hoses, which are here being fixed by Jonathan. Jonathan had a very impressive box of jubilee clips, and it was just what we needed. Now don't get any dirt on your always immaculate workwear, Jonathan!

Alan can see that there is a high chance that some of the engine dirt will do exactly that.

 

The siding is currently occupied by 3 wagons and the parked up Jacker Packer. It hasn't been used for several months, so we could only get it to cough, but not run. We also found that its battery was smaller than the box intended for it.

Further along, Rick and Peter had a go at revealing the fishplates buried in the clay that covers everything but the top surface of the rails.

We're still running trains of course, although we are now in the low season - P&O and the DMU today. Still many faces at the windows, as far as we could see, which is good.

Eventually we managed to shunt out the 3 wagons, and we parked the Jacker Packer back up against the little 'train'. Note the JP was not the engine! It's just parked there. But the space behind is now clear enough to work on.

Looking backwards from the platform of the TOAD, this is what you can see of the siding that we will shift. It's very ropey, not ballasted, and made up out of all the odds and ends you would put in a siding in those heady days of the 1990s.

On the right some of the material from Usk. It's not absolutely clear to your reviewer where the building is going to go, this side or that of the oak tree, but let's say in its general vicinity.

Dave then made a start on knocking out the keys, which were often buried in building rubble. This area has been a tip for years.

He also got out the nut runner, and to our amazement most of the rusted on nuts actually came off. Only two had to be cut.
Note there is no fish plate behind him; this siding is made up out of odd bits of rail and it may well be that we will find something longer and better in our scrap pile this time, when we put it all back together.

The first (short) length of rail tipped out easily. The second one was longer and wouldn't.

Some levering, packing and lifting did the trick, and then three of us were able to tip it out of its beds.

Towards the end of the morning we were quite pleased to see that we had done about half of it - the train was moved, the nuts came off, the rail was freed, and here Martin is lifting out the first length to put it on one side. The slew to the right of the whole siding should gently start somewhere near the chap in the distance.

At the end of the morning the first two panels were pretty much dismantled. That's enough for us to charter in Stevie next Wednesday to lift out the rest (buried....) and dig out the site for a bed of ballast (and not clay as before).

More was done in the afternoon, but your blogger responded to an invitation from the CPRE at Highnam to attend this year's awards ceremony. Why was not perfectly clear, but it sounded exciting.

In fact the Campaign to Protect Rural England does not hold a competition as such, there are no winners, but it does make annual awards to small projects with a rural interest that have particular merit. This year there were 6, as you can see from the board above.

We saw to our delight that one of these was the rebuild of Hayles Abbey halt. Hence the invitation then.

Three of us were there to receive a framed certificate for the railway, as well as a circular plaque, which we will attach to the inside of the corrugated iron shelter, a fairly discreet place, but one that people will see.

In the picture Glyn, chairman of our Trust which funded the rebuild, is giving a short acceptance speech for the framed certificate.

Here's our certificate and plaque. We are all very proud of it.

Of course that was June 2017, and we are already well into the next heritage project, so who knows what recognition that might bring...