Back on the Broadway canopy overhang

Monday at Toddington.

With all the winds and rain we've been having recently, we have temporarily transferred the site of our footbridge construction activity to the loco shed at Toddington, where it's nice and dry. Windstill in there too, but the wind does rattle terribly outside on the roller shutter doors. He wants you to know that while you have sheltered from him, he is still there.

These pieces are for the canopy overhang, the piece that unites the end of the building with the bottom of the footbridge steps. They will provide a lovely circulating area underneath, and keep passengers from the station who use the footbridge in the dry for the whole of their journey.

In the picture you can see the arched ridge purlin, the piece of sculpted fabrication that gives Broadway that special look.

The green bit is the extra length we've had to add in to try and get something like the original length back.

Neal was on the next step, which is the fabrication of the two posts which support the extra truss across the end of the steps.

The truss on the end of the building has the attachment points for the overhang structure, and the end of the canopy today is blanked off with plywood as a temporary measure.

What Neal is making here are the bases for the two columns. They will be secured to four bolts already in the ground - those just need uncovering, left and right of the steps.

A whining buzz overhead made us run out, to find this Air Force A400 scoot over the yard at slightly more than treetop height. It can't go any lower, as a few seconds' flight away is the Cotswolds edge, and the aircraft has to clear that.

Later in the day we had the ridge purlin and one of the two others out for cleaning and painting in primer.

Two fascia boards are also ready, in fact all the steelwork for the overhang, except for the two posts, is now ready.

On the woodwork, Neal has two more sections of supporting timber to cut and joint, then we attach the tongue and groove sides. It doesn't look like we are going to be able to complete the steps (Cotswolds side) before opening though. But we are close.









Wednesday with the Usketeers.

There was a big lorry behind the carriage shed this morning:

It was loaded with 5m and 10m long sheet piles. There was at least one previous lorry, as a bogie flat in the yard was all loaded up with sheet piles and ready to go south.

The contractors had a socking great big Telehandler on site too, a Manitou.

These piles must be pretty heavy; we have our own Telehandler but it's probably not up to this job.

Big, scarce money is being paid for this, and you can see where it is going.

Our money however went on doughnuts, it's a matter of priorities. Or perhaps our modest budget, and large appetite for them.

The chief doughnut runner Paul reported bare shelves in the supermarkets, what's going on? Panic buying? According to an ITV article, the average number of deaths from normal, seasonal flu in the UK per year is - 17.000 ! Who knew, and did we empty the shelves in the supermarkets in previous years? Seasonal flu has a mortality rate of 1%, Corvid19 around 2% but falling as better treatments are being developed. So why the panic? Even yours truly had flu this year, and he's still around.

Interesting factlet: two people a day die in the UK from falling down the stairs - you should be worrying about that. But probably you are not.

Your blogger's cataract procedure means avoiding dust for a month, so Neil and Dave woke Maxie out of her weekly slumber this morning.

They weren't very kind to her. Dave put his hand over her nose to start her (actually he put his hand over the air filter, a work around for a broken choke) and Neil here hit her over the head with a shovel (to dislodge some mortar clinging to the inside of the barrel).

We're a rough and ready lot.

The forecast was for rain later in the day, so we didn't hang about and tried to get as much brick laying in before lunch. We're up to row 10 on the right, and in the picture Dave is starting on the middle section to bring it up to the same height.

Here's Dave on that same middle section, working on the third course, which will bring the middle section up to row 10 as well.

Mid morning there was a toot and an impressive train with sheet piling chugged past.

It turned out to be a bit of a false alarm, as shortly afterwards it chugged by again in the other direction, so clearly a shunting move. But interesting.

Coronavirus or not, our people are ready.

While masks are not regarded as being particularly effective against the spread, at least the headgear will prevent hearing further alarming stories about it.

We had a slightly later lunch, as we guessed the promised rain ('Light Rain') would put a stop to further brick laying, so we made hay while we could. Here Dave is putting a first row on the last section, with the rows he put on the middle bit visible in the foreground.

And that's pretty much where we stopped. Anticipating the arrival of the rain while we had our snap, we covered up the work and rinsed out Maxie.

During lunch time it did indeed begin to rain, actually quite heavily. Again.

The PWay gang came back from Pry Lane, Broadway, where they had been fishplate greasing. Good progress was made, as alternate rail joints were welded here when we laid that track, so it was faster.

As we munched our lunch, we could hear the unmistakable sound of the class 73's compressor, so a quick look out of the window revealed that this was to be the actual train taking the first load of piles down to Gotherington. Soon the first passenger train of the season will rumble by.