A pause for thoughts.

Monday at Broadway.

A dry (-ish) day at last, and the merry gang was back on the footbridge centre span, undercoating the very last bit of the roof, topcoating the second-to-last bit, while Neal was making rapid progress with the treads towards the end of the span, after we had moved the chunky pile of T&G to the middle section again. There it was stored on rollers, so that we can roll it somewhere, should there be a next time. Yes, we are lazy...

Dave of the Broadway gang was very proud to show us the new HAYLES ABBEY HALT running in board, which according to the cunning plans will last a lot longer than the first one. We shall see. But - the plywood backboard used in the first version has now been replaced by three big boards of T&G. The same letters are being used again, because we are using castings in Aluminium now. They last, and look right. It's worth taking the trouble.

While clearing that big pile of T&G boards, we also had to move the sample timbers we stored up there. They come from the original footbridge in Henley in Arden.  A lot of the woodwork was rotten, depending on the direction of the wind and rain. But some was still almost perfect, like this panel.

Neal was going to drag it out of the way, then had a brainwave - why not keep it in the place where it came from?

 And this is that place, half way up the steps. You can now see what all that T&G board will be used for.
Basically there is a diamond shaped frame around the panel, and it's the parts of that frame that need all the shaping work done.

Here Neal is holding one in its place. In the middle of the boards you can make out a little square - that is the place of a handrail support. We have those.

We have the top member of each frame, spindle moulded by our C&W team. The other 3 parts of each frame, and the cross members, will now be shaped by a joiner that we have found in a nearby village. Because his mother used to cycle to Broadway to take the train to work in Cheltenham, there was a great rapport with us rebuilding the station, and he gave us a very friendly rate. Thanks!

 Neal decided to keep the panel in place, and here he's clamping a piece of timber on, which will help to keep the panel up.

Here's the panel from a distance, in a moment of golden sunshine late afternoon.

We're going to be taking the timber, currently in store at Winchcombe, to the joiner on Friday. When it comes back, we'll be painting it with wood preservative and then primer, before Neal also gives it some attention. Hence, after a bit of a hiatus recently as the wood was held up, we are back on the fast track on the footbridge. We'd like to have it finished for the next season.




Wednesday at Winchcombe

 A bright sunny day, and a full mess coach.

In view of the chilly temperature though, the doughnuts were heated, and Mike, front left, is testing the first one.

A discussion about lime mortar is taking place at the rear. Unusual stuff, lime mortar.

Paul checking the dismantling file of the Usk building.

We've mugged up a bit on the stuff, and the advice is that we shouldn't use it when there is frost around. The stuff goes off by the absorption of CO2 from the atmosphere, and it takes several months. Given the advice, we have decided not to build the stone walls during this winter, which we hope you will appreciate is a prudent decision.

We have an alternative build in mind during the winter, and talks are being held about that. All the materials are already there.

The door of the building is in store round the corner, so today we had a measure up and Paul gave a bit of advice on how it will interact with the floor.

As you can see, the bottom of the door has been affected by rot, especially by the frame, as these timbers, being vertical, absorb moisture from below.

In this original picture in the Usk goods yard you can see how the bottom of the door disappears behind a low brick wall. This wall is a later addition, and we believe was built to hold back the ground level, which was raised around the building over the years. The original ground level is visible in the trench on the left.

The rot probably occurred when water ran down the door and was trapped behind the low wall.




We decided to have the door ending above the new sill, so will advise the joiner to repair it accordingly. It shouldn't be too hard. The old sill is broken in two, and after hunting round Winchcombe yard we decided that a slice off an old CRC sandstone platform slab was about the right material, thickness and look. We just need to find someone with a disk cutter to cut us a slice off. Hopefully next week that.

The main Wednesday gang was out along the line today. This gang here on Chicken curve cleared the sleeper eds of recently swept ballast, so that the track walkers could readily identify faults.

The other gang was out replacing cracked fishplates. Two more spent the day sorting out our store of them.

Getting the tools back at the end of the day from Chicken Curve was easy - just barrow them a few 100yds back home, cup of coffee to finish, job done!

A glance along the way down on the Isbourne showed that the contractors were now working with piled sheets, rather than the big pipes originally intended. With all this rain recently (as opposed to October 2018) the Isbourne has had days of very high water.

We should get a separate blog report for this shortly. Then the full strategy will be revealed!




In other news we noticed this unusual set of bench ends in the C&M shed. They have been donated to us as coming from Monmouth.

Middle piece.

Bench end.

We wonder if any readers can say more about this design. It is not a GWR design as far as we know (scripted, or later roundel bench ends) and normally we would have said this is a Victorian garden ornament, but for the apparent Monmouth connection, and the fact that there are three of them. That would be a big garden bench.

Any ideas?