Post - op.

Wednesday with the Usketeers

First day out after the eye operation to remove a cataract, which went well. Jolly painful though, with a chap poking your eye and asking the nurse for 'another spear' from time to time. You knew what was coming next then! As we were wheeled back into the waiting room, the next chap in line refused at the fence. The previous candidate was a little old grannie, so if she can do it, everyone can.

Now comes a period of recuperation. There are strict instructions to avoid strenuous exercise, dirt and dust. Oh.
But can I...

- Shovel ballast? No.
- Use a nut runner? No.
- Carry trip jacks and throw them into the Landie? Nope.
- Play with Maxie? Neither.
- Hack open a bag of dusty cement and throw the contents into a mixer? Certainly not !

What can we do then? Stand there and watch, gentle stuff only for 4 weeks...

The doughnuts were plentiful this morning, and they were custard ones too. You bite into them, and yellow custard squeezes out.

Someone quipped that this was like 'biting into a zit'.

That did rather affect the pleasure of eating one...





We had a very small but compact team of two for most of the day. One Usketeer was off sick, another turned up but had a back issue, while a third had a cataract operation and was under orders not to do anything strenuous or indeed dusty. What a load of wimps.

Dave here usually lays plenty of bricks, but had to spend the morning in a planning meeting for our wartime event. Most of the Usketeers wear more than one hat, and also devote time to special events, act as guard, ticket inspector, canopy construction, Hayles maintenance and so on.

So actually doing any work first thing were only Paul and John, with the same number (two) of observers, Julian and yours truly.





As Dave was not the regular mixer and was not well acquainted with the dodge of using a squirt of washing up liquid in the water, his mix came out much too soupy in this first mix of the day.

Paul, a builder with 40 years in the trade, promptly shovelled it back into Maxie for her to 'chew the cud'.

The liquid gloop was then followed by a couple of firm shovels of dry-ish sand, after which the mix had the desired stiffness for laying blues.

 

With the stiffer mortar Paul then built an intermediary column which, like the one he built on the far corner last week, went all the way to the top with course 12. This then leaves 5 courses to fill in here.

John spent the day fetching blues from the other side of the yard, so is out of sight.

Paul built a second column nearer the buffer stop, so separating the five courses still needing to be laid into three stretches to fill in.

There we go - finished. Those blues do look nice. They are all from the old turntable pit at Avonmouth, and constitute the remainder of what was taken to Broadway and not fully used there.

Here's brick fetching John just arrived with another barrow load, and surveying the scene to give himself a bit of a break.

None of us are the youngest on this job, but John we suspect is the least youngest among us, but works equally hard. It's best to keep the body moving.

Elsewhere in the yard at Winchcombe the track gang was measuring up our pile of spare flat bottom rail to see if there is a 60ft one between them.


The devil makes work for idle hands, so we wandered up to the road bridge to see the effect of those big Lego bricks that have now been dropped into the cess by the turnout we moved not so long ago.

A row of bricks at Winchcombe

Here they are, seen sideways on.

The drainage blog is very informative and will be able to say more about what is going on here.

Outside Churchward House two chaps from C&M were looking into a hole. It's what they do.

We ascertained that it was a foulwater drain with a top that had failed, so it was being rebuilt. The white bucket fitted in perfectly and was there to stop the material being chipped away from falling back into the chamber. Very neat.

A visitor returning from Churchward House reported how smart it now looked inside. A credit to those that achieved this.

Back on the wall and we had two visitors from the track gang, who had been out at Gretton to effect some repairs where a small number of sleepers had not resisted well the passage of the tamper today.

In the picture Paul was being offered a bag of his own sweets (Paul has a sweet tooth and always has a bag of sweets for the gang) and appears to have a lot to say about it. We will draw a veil over that.

After lunch Dave joined us again, after a successful meeting planning the next wartime event.

He immediately started on the infill between the first two columns Paul had built. He's up to row 9 there in the picture.

Brick laying isn't just about slapping down some bricks on to mortar, but also about pointing your work, which is what Dave is doing here. That's very slow and needs a good eye.

At one point we thought Dave had invented a new way of laying these bricks more quickly - you start with mortar, not only under the bricks, but also in between, and then you just drop them into the gap, and - finished !

Here's Paul, also infilling between two columns now. We did really well today (after last week's washout) and this end of the wall completed the day with row 10 on. Two more rows to go then.

We think we might be able to get it all done in 3 more sessions? Or maybe that's a bit optimistic, but as soon as the risk of freezing is gone we need to make a start on the building, with its lime mortar.

The end of the day was a bit more gloomy, and the temperature never climbed above 5 degrees. Sleet is announced for tomorrow.

As we walked back to wash up, the tamper trundled by, back from its two jobs at Gretton and Cheltenham. Neil was baby sitting it; we always have a member of the gang on board to act as liaison. The next job here will be to ballast the viaduct and then tamp it, ready to reopen the line to Broadway.


Spring clean at Hayles Abbey halt.

The Usketeers are a loose knit group, and also rebuilt Hayles Abbey halt. It's finished now of course, but it still needs some aftercare and tlc.

The grass is starting to grow, so a small group went out to mow the grass, as you can see on this rather sunny picture. Also taken today, well the weather does change this time of year.

The stock of leaflets was replenished with 2020 ones, and the notices refreshed.

Finally, John also took a picture of the running in board, which looks the same as before but the board itself has in fact been completely rebuilt. Instead of plywood it is now made of tongue and groove planks, which we think will be a lot more robust. Well, that is how they were made originally.
The very effective rebuild was done by the Broadway maintenance gang, and they did well.

If you have read the Cornishman just out, you will know the story behind the letters 'HALT'.