On a hot tin roof

Monday at Broadway.

A hot and muggy day.

The forecast was for thunderstorms and rain, but we never got them, so had a great day on the footbridge with the roof sheets on the P2 side.

The bent sheets for the intermediate landing are now almost ready, thanks to a quick visit by Neal on a normally non-working day for our little gang to get an extra coat of paint on and hurry the job along.

Today we were able to mount them.

The first one is on, and this is the gap for the two others.

Once we have the landing ones on, we can do the straight sheets above and below them. The bent sheets were therefore key for roofing the P2 steps.

After manhandling the rather awkward sheets up the scaffolding, trying not to scratch them too much, they went on quite quickly.

Here is Neal screwing down the second of the three sheets.

In this picture all three landing sheets are on, and Neal has just placed one of the straight sheets above. That has to go on top of the landing sheet, but under the ones above. In places these are two even three sheets thick, so it's quite a wriggle to get them in and then secured down.

Here is Neal with the second straight sheet, and the third just just on camera on the right. They are very awkward to lift up, and despite the thin gauge selected here, surprisingly heavy.

At lunch time we had the three landing sheets on, and two of the three straight ones above.

You can almost feel the heavy, muggy air in this grey photograph. It was hot too.

While we were fitting the sheets today, we had help from the FoBS team, who added another coat to some of the last 6 sheets that we have prepared, ready to go on.

It seemed like a bright idea to fit the lower sheets too while we were at it and it remained dry, but first Neal had to fit some cross members for the sheets to rest on - some of the gaps were quite big for the thinnish sheets.

This cross member involved a steel bracket (prepared earlier, Neal has this all in his head)  and then a length of timber, sawn at an angle, between the two sides.

Here is the new cross member finally in place.

Note that now, mid afternoon, the sun has come out as well.

Now we have mugginess, and heat. Arghhhh...

On the other platform, by the station building, John spent the day T washing and primering the metal structure of the steps there. It's a long job. He even got some of the dark stone undercoat on, but to do that of course you need something in primer to put it on and a lot of the steelwork is still in the zinc.

At the end of the afternoon we got to the second of the three lower sheets.

We didn't do the last one, as we had run out of the special screws. And tiredness began to set in.

Here is an overview of the roofing work of the two footbridge steps, left and right.

As you can see, on the left where we were working today there is one more sheet to go, then three more, and that's it for the roofing.

We still need the scaffolding for the mouldings, but think we can put up the sides of the steps without scaffolding. We'd have to put the treads on though.

The mouldings are next on the list, but this is where we are thinking ahead.



Wednesday on the goods platform.

A dull day, but dry, Great! Ideal weather for laying blocks.

There were only 4 of us, everyone seems to be on holiday somewhere. The usual Wednesday PWay bash had to be cancelled due to low numbers, and this nearly happened on Saturday too.

This is the wall as seen when we started first thing.

4270 was the first loco to make an appearance, one of two 'kettles' in service today. Here it is just doing the token exchange with the Winchcombe signalman.

We started laying at the buffer stop end, where Jonathan took this picture.

He calls it 'Flower Power'. Flower, because of the Poppies, and Power.... well surely it can't be because of this pair of oldies heaving away there?

When 4270 came steaming back with the first train out of CRC we were already doing quite well with the first of the two courses we put on today.

Paul always waves, in the hope of getting a friendly wave or a smile back from an attractive young lady. So far, not all of the conditions were ever fulfilled.




We had a huge palletful of blocks to start with, and a barrow of fresh mortar.

Maxie was sputtering away well today, although we did discover that she is dribbling a bit about her carburettor.

You get that, with advancing years.

We had a new Usketeer today in Jonathan, whom we let loose with the shovel. He backed up Paul with a sloppy mix.

Paul has got his shorts on, because it's summer, see. Doesn't matter what the actual weather is though.

The King was the second kettle out today. Paul's lack of waving hints how slack jawed he was to find Bert Ferrule, in full working regalia, on the footplate. Whaaaaat? Isn't orange on the footplate 'verboten' as it ruins everyone's picture?

These are also fishplates.

Out in the yard 3 volunteers spent the day in the dark, damp depths of the GUV sorting out fishplates. As their skin was starting to go all wan in the dark they decided to carry on sorting out in the fresh air, and here have discovered a palletful of them. Oh happy day.

A quick sortie into the C&W carpentry workshop between mixes found Neal from the canopy gang setting up the router to make the mouldings for the footbridge.

In the picture he is holding the head, to which the desired cutting shape is attached. The grey bit underneath is a test length of the finished product.

This is how the spinning head carves the desired shape, in this case one of two channels. The head belongs to C&W, and the blades were provided by Neal.

Consternation though when Neal set everything up, and it turned out that the head was 1.5mm - yes, one and a half tiny millimeters - bigger than the spindle onto which it is supposed to fit.

C&W had the head for years, but never tried it out in practice.

An urgent visit to a tool shop is now planned, as we really need to get on with this. It was all meant to happen today.

After lunch we resumed at the stop block end, and now with a second course.

It would be the 9th out of the 11 required.

The crazy concrete sleeper is just resting there, waiting to go somewhere else.

We'll be building a wall right round this.

4270 regaled us with a nice departure quite close to where we were working. You can hardly miss such a heavy freight engine, and 8 on.

A few of the blocks got broken in vain attempts by Julian to split them lengthways down the middle. In order to save money we incorporated a few bits of Julian's wreckage in the wall today.

We got through 2 pallets and a bit today, say 150 blocks. Here is Peter just loading another (half) pallet on to the Permaquip trolley, ready for next time. We put down courses 8 and 9, leaving 10 and 11 to do on the portion nearest the stop block.

This is the view at the close of play. The straight part of the wall is nearing completion, with just two courses to do. That should be about one day's work. Then we have the return round the stop block (which should be interesting, how is that going to work then?) and a few yards down the other side to hold the terrain back.

Around 15.30 we began to develop interest in a cup of tea from the Coffeepot. Interest grew as we cleaned up Maxie, the dirty mortar barrow, the shovels with hardened on mortar on them, and the unused cement to throw back into the hut.

 We had a quick look at the King, as we trudged wearily up to the Coffeepot, arriving there at 15.50.

We paused only to look back at the arriving class 26, which appears to be 60 years old this year.

Well that is considerably younger by several years than the average age on the wall building gang.

But we digress, we had good, strong tea on our minds.

Unfortunately we ran into a locked door at the Coffeepot! Oh horror. Surely it couldn't be closed at 10 to 4? We always sit there as the last diesel comes in.

An attempt to score 4 cups of tea from the window of the buffet car of the waiting train was severely whistled back by the guard. Stand clear ! Foiled again.

Seeing our thirsty plight, this very kind station staff gentleman - he was a true gentleman - vanished round the back of the kitchen and reappeared bearing gifts: 4 steaming cups of tea.

Just what we needed. We collapsed on a bench and sipped. What a day it's been. And it ended well.

Time to reflect on a milestone reached yesterday too. We posted image No. 1000 (!) on the John Lees section of the 'Early GWSR' Flickr site. The latest batch is based on prints that John took in 1986. Usually John took slides, but for a short period in 1986 he changed to colour prints, and these have no also been scanned. Due to this they are out of sequence, as we aim in principle to have a +/- chronological series in the album. Rearranging them within Flickr has proved too complicated, so please bear with.

The web address for John's collection is this:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/73536293@N02/albums/with/72157664738875108

We hope you like the nostalgic journey into the early days of our railway.

Looking over the fence - Dean Forest

A quick trip to a neighbouring steam railway - the Dean Forest at Norchard. It was a much smaller scale than the GWSR, and a different atmosphere. Each steam railway has its own. Here, there were 5 coaches and an Austerity on a 5 mile trip up a steep valley

This is the current terminus, Parkend. When prolonged, Speech house would be the next stop, right in the middle of the forest. Mrs. Blogger loved it.

Parkend seemed very authentic, down to the open gents urinal (OK, now with a roof)

Operationally, the rugged and powerful Austerity seems ideal for this railway, with its relatively short but quite steep stretch of line.

Among the original artefacts at Parkend is the footbridge, an open design with cast iron posts at the end.

Closer inspection of the post revealed a familiar maker:

E. FINCH

1899

CHEPSTOW

This is of course the company that made all the ironwork on the Honeybourne line. You can see their worksplate on the station canopies of Toddington and Broadway, on the footbridges (just Broadway now), the aqueduct (now replaced) and the road and rail bridges along the line.

We stopped here at one point. Have we run out of water already? Surely not? We hadn't, this was just a neighbour on an exercise.




What was really appealing was the opportunity to travel in this, a 1947 engineers saloon, designed by Hawksworth and built for the GWR in 1947. It is one of only 6 that survive, out of 7 built.

Here it is in all its glory. For an extra £3 return you sat in a beautiful interior with some original furniture too.

Imagine sitting at this end, and listening to the Austerity hacking away uphill right in front of you!






Here's a picture from the inside. Very likely the furniture is so large it couldn't be taken away for disposal, and hence has survived.









There are two saloons, with a central kitchen, guards compartment (with upholstered seat!) and a toilet. There's a desk, with its own light and a clock above.

Those observing the track at the windowed end have 4 buttons to contact the engine driver, guard or attendant. Large levers release steps down to the track, and there's a bell like on an auto coach to warn people ahead.

The Dean Forest railway as you probably know has a mixed heritage of both GWR and Midland. Lamp posts from both companies are dotted about the Norchard site, and we found this one particularly interesting. It is, unusually, lettered 'GWR Co' as well as the foundry (illegible) underneath. Several foundries supplied lamp posts to the GWR.

The GWSR can sell replica GWR lamp posts, and one of these in fact now stands at Norchard.


What struck us at the Dean Forest was their sense of own history. There is a small but superb museum about the railways in their area, and an excellent bookshop next door if you want to know more.

We still need to set up some fire buckets at Broadway. They are long, like the one in the foreground, and the brackets are cast, as in this picture. If you can help with either long buckets or cast brackets, drop us a line at breva2011 (at) hotmail.co.uk.

Bend it, like - Neal

Earlier at Broadway

Heavy rain, family visits - any excuse for a missing blog. But here we are, back again from gone away.

On Friday the weather was very iffy, but luckily we had thought to put sheets indoors - with limited space - so could paint some of them.

Here are three corrugated iron sheets which have already had some etch primer on them, and now they were getting a first coat of bitumen.

They are very tall, so the top edge is done by standing craning on your toes, while the bottom edge is a hands and knees job.

In between showers Neal got the saw bench out and cut some cross members for the P2 roof. Normally they'd be square but we want a slight fall over the intermediate landing roof so that is the bit he is cutting off.

Then, armed with the prepared pieces he went up the scaffolding and cut them to length. Now they are on, ready for some sheets.

Our work was (pleasantly) interrupted by this slow biplane that flew over the station.

Our first thought was a Rapide, but that has two engines and the lower wings are shorter.

Anyone have any ideas what it was then?

Another interruption was this fire and drive trip, headed by P&O.

As you can see it was raining heavily so when we say 'interruption' that is to tea while sheltering in the mess room.

John kept himself busy in one of the containers, this time with dagger boards, which have all had another coat of primer applied by him, along those bits that have been cut to get them to the right shape.

We noted that dagger boards on the LBSCR at HK are just plain boards with a point. Now why couldn't the GWR build like that.

Yes, yes, we had a day on the Bluebell, OK, OK. But it's interesting to look over the fence to see how others solve problems, or look after their own heritage.

We have reproduction lamp tops, but they even have reproduction oil lamps inside, and it is only inside the actual oil lamp that they have a LED light bulb.

Maybe something for us to consider for P2, where there are no lamp tops at all yet.

An actual working gas lamp along the drive.

Down their drive at Sheffield Park and under the canopy they had actual gas lamps, with a pilot light burning. The wooden ceiling under the canopy was quite black from the smoke. The gas, we learned, was LPG and a tank had to be filled at intervals. Not sure if we want to go that far down the road though.

Back at Broadway the rain eased after lunch, and we dared to have a go at placing some roof sheets.

Here is the first one just being pushed into place. We're on P2 now.

This is the view from above, looking down along the first sheet just placed. Its lower edge is resting on the cross member Neal cut earlier in the day.

This is the view from inside, under the first sheet placed at the top.

Cosy, isn't it?

We took this picture while on a rare trip along the centre span. We've put one half painted sheet up there, as it's dry and long - a good place to paint if it's raining.

The station canopy is very impressive we thought. It looks so neat. The clouds above continue to look menacing.

This is the far end of the centre span, seen from inside. Now you know what it looks like.

The inside of the sheets was never painted when originally put up a couple of years ago now, so that's another job on our list. Also the painting scheme is a bit willy-nilly; it should be dark stone for supporting members, and light stone for infill.

A bit later the top three sheets on the P2 steps had been fitted. We can't go any further at the moment because the sheets for the intermediate landing still have to be bent into that 'S' shape.

At the end of Friday the footbridge looked like this. The roof on the P1 steps is done, that on the P2 steps started. One quarter of the dagger boards there still remain to be fitted too.

From the side the painting scheme looks just right - dark stone for the structural pieces, and light stone for the panels.



A few days later we caught Neal and the steam dept. lads in the loco shed with those famous sheets for the intermediate landing

With these two pictures you can see exactly how they bent them to shape, thanks to a number of off cuts from scaffolding tubes welded together in a row.










There's a spare bit of canopy extension (the green length of strip you can just see) and once the sheet is in position over the tubes the press is screwed down and that pushes a fold into the sheet.





The job is done now, but we're keeping the tube former for a future job. You never know, we could always build another footbridge from scratch, we have a pretty good idea now how to do it.


The two yard lamps at Toddington have grown a bit more substantial too.

They have both had their platforms and ladders fitted. The taller post on the left, ex Dumbleton, has an all new ladder and platform, based on the one on the right, which still had the original. That, we learned, is pretty rare these days too. The ladders bars, to which they attach, are new as well.

Now all that remains to do is fit a pair of replica lamp tops. You may have noticed an appeal for this on the steam dept blog for this. We have the design, and a potential supplier ready to go.




Wednesday on the goods platform

A jolly day on the railroad for us all, as it didn't rain. Or hardly. Some went off to Toddington yard to change a fishplate, others went to dig out cribs on the Defford straight in preparation for Saturday, and more still did some track walks.

A few 'Remainers' stayed at Winchcombe and laid blocks.

Here's where we started. While we were drinking tea and eating doughnuts there was a delivery of 4 pallets of blocks, so we felt we really ought to stop talking and get going.

The first pallet is already on the trolley, so now to get Maxie out of bed.

There were complaints that the mortar was late, and that it was all Maxie's fault, and that she had better pull her finger out.

We doubted that Maxie would put her finger anywhere, as it has orange nail varnish on it. In fact, she has orange everywhere.

Two locos today, and they would meet right in front of us, here at Winchcombe. 4270 is waiting on the right, while King Edward II came in somewhat slowly (we thought) and bearing a member of the canopy gang on the footplate. Tsk. It's who you know, apparently. Meanwhile, we were on the mixer shovel, and be quick about it too, there are people waiting.

When Neil eventually brought a barrow of muck to the wall, there was no-one there. Surprise. There had been talk about going to the cafe en masse to get sandwiches for lunch. Is that where they all went?

But no.

They had been to the other side of the yard to score some scaffolding planks, on LT lease as it were.

We will use them here as a base from which to lay the higher rows of blocks, and then use them to build the Usk hut, which will need scaffolding at some point.

All the block laying today was on sections 1 and 2 at the stop block end. Sections 3 and 4, nearest the camera, are done.

Your blogger unexpectedly started a huge argument when he happened to mention which way round the loo roll was usually placed in the Blogger Country Pile. It seems there are two very fervent camps about the way a loo roll faces. It suddenly got very loud, and curtains were seen to twitch next door.

We got through three pallets today, we reckon about 200 blocks. That's probably a daily record for us. It's really handy when you can load them straight on to the Permaquip trolley with the Telehandler, and then from there, lay them straight on to the wall. Hence the rapid progress.

It did mean an awful lot of mortar mixing.

Maxie got thirsty and we had to give her a topping up drink of petrol.

We have two piles of sand to play with, and the first one is looking a bit low by now. All that sand, the best part of a lorry load, has gone through Maxie and then by wheelbarrow (with a wobbly wheel, we saw today) to the block laying site and then spooned out in front of Paul's boots.

Waiting for Godot. Er, Maxie....

Neil did a lot of the barrowing today, as well as the shovelling on to the wall.

Bringing back the empty barrow gave him the opportunity for a quick five, sitting on some spare concrete kerbs while Maxie churned her stuff.

As you can see here, the first two sections are rising quickly. We laid three rows of blocks on each section today, with both merged here to look like one.

4270 was the other steamer out today, and we got admiring glances from the fireman - we think.

This picture was taken near the end of the afternoon, and shows the last of the three rows advancing towards the stop block.

Some kind soul has given that stop block a bit more black paint too. Previously there were still several areas in red oxide, but not any more.

Our last picture shows where we stopped today. Sections 1 and 2 are at rows 6 and 7, out of 11 in total. It looks as if we will complete at least the straight part of the wall within the next two sessions.

Time to think about the foundations of the Usk building!

Just a peek over the fence as it were, but we understand this previously unrestored restaurant vehicle, in army green, is nearing the head of the restoration queue. That would be fun, it's always exciting to see a vehicle that has never been restored before.

It's parked here behind the S&T workshop, where it has stood for a long time.

At the end of the day we all drifted over to the Coffeepot, where the different parts of today's gang came together.

The Usketeers and those that worked at Toddington and Defford are already here, as King Edward II rolls in majestically.

As some of the passengers came off the footbridge, they were headed by one pair of track walkers bearing spanners - and a coffee.

It's Rob and Doug - cheers, guys!

From the other direction came a second pair of track walkers, Robert and Peter. Rob and Doug were quicker off the mark with their coffees, it would seem. Never mind, there's a big pot of tea waiting for them outside the cafe.

The Peak rumbles in behind, as we close another happy day's volunteering on the railroad.