GWR bench repaired

Friday at Willersey, Broadway and Toddington.

We met at Broadway, to hear the good news that Neal had slipped in on Wednesday and finished the last of the timberwork for the Cotswolds side steps.

We're not ready to fit them yet, as they all need preserving and painting, but we started that process  today.

Friday was also the final of the 4 days where we run race specials to CRC. It was also a special day, as it is the only day on which we run a train from Broadway. An external company runs the Northern Belle charter train from Paddington to Evesham, where the luxurious passengers are bused to GWSR Broadway station (our Honeybourne link still being a gleam in our eye).

At Broadway an 8 coach steam hauled special awaited them, with refreshments on board. The Broadway loco was Foremarke Hall today, and the two Toddington trains were hauled by P&O and Dinmore Manor, with the 9466 pannier in light steam as reserve.

The special headboard for the occasion was
 'AT THE RACES'.

Once the buses arrived at the bottom of the drive a large number of happy punters streamed up to the station, and several had themselves photographed in front of the gleaming GWR loco.

One young lady was offered a quick view of the cab, and on leaving she informed the astonished canopy gang that she had never seen a steam engine in her life before.

How the other half lives...

Then, with a 10 minute late start due to stragglers, the train with the happy punters pulled away, pleasingly in vigourous style to your correspondent's ear.

Broadway then fell silent again....

But we had exciting news: Our wooden 10ft bench was ready, all repaired by our friendly carpenter in Willersey.

In the foreground some 4'' bodging screws, and a 6 inch nail extracted from the woodwork.

All three of us drove over there to see what Steve had managed to do with what was pretty much a ruin that we rescued from a wet bus shelter in Paxford. Given the proximity of the OWW line, we think the bench most likely came from Blockley station round the corner. This was closed by BR in 1966, and as the station building was a very basic wooden one, with no canopy, it is quite possible that this bench spent much of its life outdoors. Transfer to the bus shelter at Paxford did not help its condition, as the floor of the shelter was wet and when we found the bench the legs were partly rotted away and one was missing altogether.

Here is the bench, as now repaired. Steve explained to us what he had done. The nearest end is almost completely new, and all of the legs have had little hardwood extensions fitted to them to bring them back to their original length, and the bench to its correct seat height. (17'')

Note that the seat is made of a single plank, something that would be hard to find today.

Here's carpenter Steve with the bench end that he made for us. The old one (in his hands) only had one leg, and before putting it into the 9'6'' bus shelter someone had cut 6ins out of the 10ft GWR bench, and crudely nailed the cut off end back on. Steve fixed this with proper mortice and tenon joints.

On the right is the remaining leg with its rotten foot.

We will now rub down the bench and fill in the teenage graffiti that was carved into the back. As the bench is a local affair, we even discovered who the teenagers were. One told us that he often sat on the bench waiting for the school bus, and that it seemed very low. Now we know why!




We will pick the bench up next week. It is earmarked for under the P2 canopy, when that is built.

Having done what we could for the day at Broadway, we proceeded to Toddington, where yours truly applied dark stone undercoat to the two fascia boards, while Neal and John continued to cut and weld steel for the brackets for the two posts.