Grovelling on hands and knees

Wednesday with the Usketeers

A last hurrah of the summer, with a beautiful sunny and crisp day. How shall we start it?

Not with doughnuts, Paul surprised us with sausage rolls and we were encouraged to 'take'


GO ON, TAKE ONE !!!

one...

We took one, and slurped some tea.



Then Paul seemed quite keen to get going, and we rushed out of the mess coach up to the site of the Usk hut.

We had to tie all those rebars together, the ones we laid in last week. We had made a start, but there was loads to do. Hundreds of little knots, it was very wearing.

Eventually there were 5 of us down that hole, all on our hands and knees and grovelling in the dirt and water that had accumulated after the storms we had these last days.

Jim, with only one useful arm, couldn't help here, so he stood at the side and gave us encouragement.

After a very long time (so it seemed, we even resorted to a coffee break mid-morning to rest our weary knees and backs) we completed the tieing together job. Phew!

Next - Paul and Dave have placed one of the 'S' shaped pieces of rebar that will define the second layer. How high would that be? A mock up was done in the corner, to see if the steelwork would remain within the concrete.

Then came the interesting bit, in which we lift the mat we have created high enough to slip the 200 plastic spacers underneath. Would it work? Would the spacers support the weight, or fold up under the uneven weight distribution as we lift one end?

With the rebar mat suspended 6 inches off the bottom, we reached in and started placing the spacers. It was quite a mathematical puzzle. There are 200 spacers in the bag, and they need to be placed at 1m intervals. How does that look from above?

As we puzzled over the layout, Jonathan brought in further supplies, which he reached in on demand.

Finally all the spacers were in! Another stage achieved. Now to jiggle the mat around to make sure that the sides are all equidistant from the edge. A big crowbar and some wedges helped us centre the construction so far.

The next stage was the placing of the 'S' shaped supports, on which the second layer would rest.

This turned into another puzzle. In principle we had enough for 5 rows, but in practice there seemed to be more, so where to put them?

After 3 of us had been tieing them down for quite a while already, Paul announced that some of them had to move. Arghhh!


Where to move to? Another discussion ensued, and finally we decided to think about it overnight, and resume next week.

Broadway on Monday was pretty much a washout.

We put the third and final coat on the centre span inside roof, sections 1-3 out of 7. It looks quite good from the finished end, less so from the other still to do.

The next stage on these first 3 sections is to paint the supporting steelwork the correct colour. In the above picture it is light stone, and we need to change that to dark. Some rubbing down and treating with a rust removing solution was done, but then it started to rain again quite heavily, and the gang made for home. You can't win every time.






At Winchcombe things were looking a bit more cheerful - if you were a member of the loco crew.

Chris was just dealing with the vacuum hose when a member of the on board kitchen staff brought him two cups of tea and a cheese roll ! How lucky can you get? We wondered if this friendly service might extend as far as the Usk hut next time?

In the carpentry workshop in the C&W shed the guys have been very busy cutting to size the timber for the Broadway footstep sides.

These here have all been cut to length and a drip groove added. There's a chamfer still to go, and many of these have already been completed and placed into storage.

Clearly an impact has been made of the pile of raw timbers, but there is a lot still to go.

Courage, mes braves!

We noticed that the yard to Churchward house, our new office acquisition in Winchcombe, was open and that members of the C&M department were working round the back.

As we knew little about this building, erected with an imposing frontage in Bradstone, we had a little peep round the back.

This is the property from the upper corner, showing that the fine stonework round the front does not extend to the sides and back. It does have air conditioning though, and a decent lockable shed.

This view shows the opposite side, where there is a sort of car port and two containers. A lot of redundant material has already been cleared out from here, and the yard is now looking much more presentable.

A curiosity of this site is this elevated area at the back.

What is less well known is that there is a stream that runs down the edge of the cutting that forms the site of Winchcombe station and yard.

In order to create a greater storage area the stream here has been conduited. The stream flows from top to bottom in the picture, right underneath the darker area.


The higher building just visible at the rear is the industrial unit occupied by our next neighbour, the forklift distributor R.J. Hall.

Due to a closing Ebay auction we had to rush home a little early, thus missing the 'post operative' tea at the Coffeepot, and all the chat that goes with it.

However, the rush back home was worth it, as we managed to secure this early GWR door plate :

This will come in useful on the P2 building at Broadway, or serve as a template for any other 'Private' locations on our GWR railway. You have to think ahead for these things.

Then a final picture of the last steam train south of the day, here headed by Dinmore Manor with a train about to enter Winchcombe, off Chicken Curve.