Two steps forward

Monday at Broadway

A cold but bright day, so time for some exterior painting, in readiness for Friday's return of the timber from the joiner.

The set of 3 original bench ends, scripted and with pierced ends, is now ready for assembly, so was moved out of the painting shed and under platform, with its future brothers and sisters.

Now all we need is the wood for it.

We had hardly finished moving the bench ends and made a cup of tea, when the delivery van came with the new wood.

Such timing!

Here are the lengths of Sapele, cut to the right width, but still with sharp edges.

We puzzled a bit about the short length, until John passed and tossed over his shoulder the comment that it was the three feet in one length.

Ah!

The hazards of wood working - a splinter !

Neal was in a P2 planning meeting during the morning. In the afternoon we caught him on the P2 top landing, where he was about to fit the last tread.

Then it's down the stairs. Unless the wood arrives on Friday, from the joiner.

While Dave got the reamer out and rounded off all the edges (it's quite painful to sit on a bench with sharp edged planks) we had a go at applying the knotting compound to the 20 pieces of timber already cut and moulded by C&W.

They've had an amazing 4 coats of wood preservative applied. 3 on purpose, and one by accident... didn't realise someone else had already done the 3rd application. Oh well, it can't do any harm.

The (anti-) knotting compound goes off really quickly, so in the afternoon we were able to start on the long job of primering the same wood.

Here are the timbers, outside during a brief burst of evening sun. When that went down, it suddenly got bitterly cold.






Never mind, that sunset must offer some interesting photo-opportunities, mustn't it?

An empty Broadway station, alone in the winter evening sunlight.

Everything from along the platforms has been stacked under the generous canopy, to be kept dry during the winter.

Winter sunset over Winchcombe

Pick your favourite one...

This scene just needs a steam locomotive and train, then photographed from P2 to catch the golden glint. Unfortunately this low sun occurs only during the non-running season. Dang. Maybe one day.





Wednesday at Winchcombe.

A bitterly cold day, not so much because of the temperature, but because of the biting wind that came with it.

We started well enough.

It was nice and warm in the mess coach - lots of bods, and some steaming kettles. Robert made a speech, which went down very well, while Steve is just having another look to see if a doughnut hasn't by any chance materialised.

'Fraid not, there were none today.

Following the speech, the track gang split into two. One group did ballast sweeping, starting from where they left off last week at Chicken Curve. That was even colder, high up there over the road.

Luckily they soon swept their way into the Defford straight, which is a long cutting and which today was free of wind.

What with the physical effort, the gang was actually quite warm.

These three pictures are by our correspondent John M, whose camera seems to have become steamed up in the excitement.

John was kind enough to provide a 'before' and 'after' photograph of the sweeping.

On the right a cleaned track fixing (SHC clip) and on the left one with ballast on it. The regulator has a bit of a habit of dislodging these clips, and covering the result with ballast so that you can't see what it has done. Very sneaky.

Later John travelled up to Toddington yard, where the second team were just clearing up. Stevie had dragged a replacement rail along the trackbed from Winchcombe, cut it to size, and inserted it in the place of the longitudinally cracked rail discovered a couple of weeks ago.

In the picture Stevie is just back filling the trench.

Job done.

Four Usketeers remained at Winchcombe.

Today we started on plan B (Plan A, working with lime mortar, being in abeyance until warmer climes) where we complete the platform by building up the facing bricks.

A supply of them was loaded on to a trolley, to have a moving stockpile for the brick layer.

The first thing to do was to place a series of platform diamond cut copers, to establish a datum for the height.

Jules is holding the track gauge. It has a black line on it, coming off the rails, which establishes the top of the platform surface.

The coping brick is placed on a lump of mortar, and the level taken over to the track gauge tells us if we are too high, or whatever.

The trolley with the bricks was then found to be in the way, so a very determined group of Usketeers decided to push it out of the way. Very sternly.

We got Maxie out again.

Maxie was thirsty straight away, so we gave her a long drink of water from a bucket.

Then a bit of congestion became apparent in her throat, so that got a thorough poking with a shovel.

Very crude, we know, no way to treat a lady mixer, but it was effective.

 A bit more mixing in the barrow when the mortar arrived on the trackbed.

And here is Paul, building a little tower, from which the rest of the facing bricks will be infilled.

A second tower is built, below one of the copers we placed earlier.








Sadly the day on the goods platform ended with the little towers being taken down again, so a 'net nil' effect there for today. There were issues with the height of the courses, we're going to try a different approach next week.

At the end of the afternoon the Toddington gang returned in the blue Landie, rail replacement in the yard completed, so good job satisfaction among the crew here.

Robert was there to welcome them back, having himself just walked from the middle of the Defford straight. The light fails quickly now, mid afternoon, and no Coffeepot to retreat to.

Notice the green Christmas decoration on the corner of the cab - we are right up to speed here.


In other heritage news:

We went to Broadway to recover the original Broadway station safe. A little curiosity from the history of the Honeybourne line. It was offered to us for use in the ticket office, but that office was decorated in a completely modern style, so there was no place for it there.

Originally the little safe would have held some petty cash overnight, nothing spectacular. It came out of the stationmaster's house, and we even have the keys.

What to do with it now? We could try selling it at auction, but it is an original artifact from our line, one of the very few that exist.

In the end we preferred to keep it, and will incorporate it in the Usk building. This will become a goods office, and as such could conceivably have had a safe in it.

Something similar is this box we saw at KRM, just recently restored. It's a cash strong box, in which receipts would have been sent back to the regional head office.

It's a droll little box. You put the money in the top, shut the lid, re-open the lid, and it's gone!!!

Now you can only get the money out with a key held at Worcester Shrub Hill.

Presumably all stations had one of these to send the takings back. They are very rare now.



KRM were very kind and offered us an authentic window for the Usk (weighbridge) hut.

We went there last Thursday, the fateful day with all that rain.

This is the A449 dual carriageway. Because of a huge lake of indeterminate depth all the cars have squashed over to the right.

A lorry didn't need to do this, and drove through somewhat promptly. Also a Q7, which went so fast that the bow wave washed over the tops of the cars on the right.

This is what we recovered. It's an arched triple window, with a fixed centre panel, and two sliding windows left and right. It's in almost perfect condition, just needs a small bit of new wood in one of the corners.

This is also a weighbridge hut window, so it would be the big front one, through which the operator could observe the weighing activity.

The original Usk window was destroyed by decay and collapsed due to the weight of the stone above it.




The gifted replacement window has gone into storage now, pending return of the original doorway, currently with a joiner for repair.