Back on the job

Monday at Broadway

The canopy gang doesn't stand still. Into the new year and we are off again. Our target this year: complete the footsteps, manufacture the canopy extension, and erect the canopy extension, during the next low season.

The title of this section is Monday at Broadway but the team was already working on Friday.

Your blogger was kindly released to answer an urgent call from the PWay gang for an extra, mid week day on the viaduct, so from Friday just this photograph. It shows the little roof extension we built for the bottom of the steps.

Before the end of the year the proper canopy extension will keep this area dry, but ad interim we want to protect the treads from the rain.

On to Monday then, which started dry, so a good day for Neal to make the many cuts and planings for the bracing timbers along the sides.

That bottom RH corner for example has a surprising number of planes in it. What you may not know is that the timber (dark stone in the background) on which it rests is itself not only inclined downwards but also tilted to one side, to get a better run-off for the rain.

Hence a normal cut to follow the downward slope would be along the pencil line, but because the bottom timer is tilted to the side, the actual cut required is as in the picture. How does Neal do it!

Having cut the upright, and chamfered the edges, it was time to drill bolt holes through it, and into the newel post at the bottom. As the upright is still raw wood, it has to be taken away again afterwards, treated and primered.

At the end of the day, and with a bit of a gap around lunch time due to a downpour, we were this far.
Higher up you can see John drilling bolt holes to fix the bottom timbers to the stringers.

In between jobs there was time to add a little extra heritage flavour to this hut.

The door plate has the pre-grouping moulding round it, so is the right era for us.

It was found on Ebay. Always worth keeping an eye open, you never know what might come up.







Other heritage advances

A reader from Eynsham was kind enough to answer our appeal for an original GWR wooden bench (not the common one with cast iron ends).

Originally this type was placed under the platform canopies, so stayed dry. But over a 100 year career many were eventually dragged out into the rain and left to rot, so the wooden platform bench is much rarer.

We are delighted with this kind gift. The bench comes from Eynsham station, which had no canopy, and so it survived indoors. It is in quite good condition too, with traces of its original varnish.

We would also love to have an upholstered one. While they are not so rare, many seem to have been snaffled up by older railways than the GWSR, so they are not easy to come by.

The Eynsham bench here is placed next to its larger brother, which was an outdoor one, albeit under a canopy (for a while).

The longer one has 6 legs, and was in very poor condition indeed, so was beautifully repaired by our C&W department.

Given that the Eynsham one is varnished, we're thinking of placing it indoors in the new P2 building.

Our kind donor from Eynsham also gave us these 3 signal lamps. We are allowed to sell them to raise funds for Broadway, so if you want one, get in touch. (breva2011 at hotmail.co.uk) They are complete, and we will be painting them black to smarten them up a bit.

At Toddington the new lanterns for the two yard lamps are all wired up and functioning.

This is the one by the water tower, with its 6 imitation gas burners. It lights up the area quite well.

Now for a picture with a loco.....

Just for comparison, here is a picture of the apron outside the shed. It's fairly atmospheric, but the lights here are modern on plastic posts.

Not so atmospheric are these new lights here, recently fixed to the 1905 goods office on the original goods shed at Toddington. The shape is modern, and so is the intensity. Without shades at the top they also add to the light pollution in our peaceful country area.

What could we do to achieve a similar lighting effect, but with a 1905 look? It is quite possible to combine operational need with respect for our heritage.

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Another batch of photographs by John Lees has been uploaded on to the Flickr site:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/73536293@N02/albums/72157664738875108/page13

We're in 2007 now, building the extension through Stanton. Why not take a look at those pioneering days?




Wednesday on that wall.

Back at work, not freezing, not too cold. So here we are, on the front of the wall next to the weighbridge rebuild at Winchcombe.

Having built a tower around the end last time, we started with the actual laying of bricks along the front today.

Jules, Paul and Jim were the 'layers' as it were (not the hens....).

Neil and yours truly did the logistics around the site.

Jules had the right mindset for the job, which in its initial stage means a lot of bending down.

Jules got comfortable on a rail, and just got on with it. A dollop of not too wet mortar on one side, and a row of bricks to lay on the other.

Half way through the morning there was a 'toot' and the class 73 trundled in, two bogie flats in tow. One was loaded with bullhead rail, the other with all the new wooden sleepers we still have left. We will be needing these at Greet to do the spot resleepering project we are about to start there (see also below)





The bogie flat loaded with the sleepers was parked by the mess coach, rather than taken out to the relay site, as, we heard, there is another train due to go to CRC for an S&T job there and we don't want to block their progress.

Behind the bogie flat is the track being used by the Isbourne contractor. The water and mud in the ruts is quite striking, in fact we think that the adjacent storage road is starting to lean over towards the left.

Luckily the works on the downstream side seem to have halted for the time being, and the contractor has moved over to the upstream side, which also has signs of scouring that need to be addressed.

Steady plodding on with the bricks produced a third row on the first section, as you can see on this picture.

In between, yours truly, assisted by Jonathan and Neil, ran a barrow back and forth between the wall and the storage site of bricks we have on the other side. We don't know just how many bricks we need, but we sure need lot and there aren't enough on site yet.

Later in the year we hope to strip out two platforms on a disused railway station that we have identified, and his could yield us several thousand blues, as well as 800 of the diamond pattern copers. That supply, if it comes off, should deal not only with the platform wall we are building, but also with the pit of the turntable, when that project goes ahead. You have to plan your supplies for this, free bricks don't come along just because you need them now.

Towards the end of the afternoon we were this far: Three courses finished and pointed up on the first stretch, and a second tower built by Paul near where the trolley is in the picture (maybe half way along).

The rest of the Wednesday gang threw themselves most vigorously into the spot resleepering project outside Greet tunnel.

Here we have identified 70 wooden sleepers for replacement, as an interim measure before a longer term concrete sleeper project between this area and where the remaining concrete sleeper track starts at Far Stanley.

Replacing 70 sleepers is a pretty chunky exercise for manual labour. The digging out and packing back in could take several weeks if all done by hand, so today the gang had the assistance of Stevie in the JCB - powered by the voluntary ingestion of early morning doughnuts and tea - who not only dug out the cribs with his narrow bucket, but also dragged out quite a number of the 'X' marked sleepers.

So that is an excellent start for the gang on Saturday.