More from Broadway

Friday at Broadway.

A bit of background work is nearing fruition, as these two replica GWR poster boards had their posters applied on Thursday.

As with the first 4 posters hung at Broadway, these are printed on an aluminium laminate, following a tip off from a blog reader who saw this cleverly done on another railway.

He liked the idea so much that he paid for the first 4 posters (which are already in place). A paper poster would soon fade and be ripped to shreds in the wind.





Seizing on the very sunny weather we had on Friday, the canopy gang went to Broadway to check out the fit of the bolts in the ground for the canopy overhang posts.

These bolts are about a foot underground, and were put in prior to the start of the erection of the steps. Soon comes the time that we will use them! After fitting to their concrete base, the bolts were covered by a slab, which you can see here being removed by Neal and John with the vacuum slab lifter.

You apply a little water to the mating surface, press a button, and a little pump exhausts the air in the suction foot and this allows you to lift the slab painlessly. Better than trying to pry it out with a chisel of crowbar.

With the slab lifted off we had access to a sort of barrel lined pit which was loosely filled with spare Thermalite blocks. Neal took these out, revealing...

... a pit with the 4 bolts at the bottom. The orange pipe is the drain for the future gutter downpipe.
Now, will the base plate with the newly drilled holes fit over the 4 bolts?

If you fit 4 bolts into a concrete base at Broadway, and a year later drill 4 holes into a steel plate at Toddington, surely the chances are that there will be a slight difference between the two?

But, all credit to Neal (who admitted to worrying a little about this) the steel plate fitted perfectly. Now the base plate can be safely welded to the bottom of one of the two posts.

Next, Neal checked the height and horizontal alignment of the future post with that of the corner of the building. A piece of timber to be fitted to the steps was used for this, together with a laser level. It was suspended from the truss in the first picture, then inserted into the hole in the second.

The levels were almost perfect, which is a relief.

The horizontal alignment was checked with a line and was found to be 20mm out, but that's no big deal and we can work around this small amount.


Saturday will see our first service trains of the new season, so a test train was sent over the viaduct and into Broadway on Friday. Quite a few visitors came and asked about the first trains, which is a good sign. Please stay loyal to the GWSR, as we need your custom this year more than ever.

There were several locomotives in steam in the yard at Toddington, warming their boilers and having last minute problems identified and ironed out.

Dinmore Manor was one, and was sent to Broadway with the test train.

It looked a bit odd without its brass safety valve cover. You don't really notice them, until they are not there.

Soon after Dinmore pulled the train back out of the station, after the briefest of stays.

Ian, Neal and John watched them leave, a smart departure followed by a lovely series of exhaust beats in the distance as the train accelerated away from the 10mph station speed limit.

Having checked the bolts and post alignments we filled the hole again, slid the slab back on top and did more pleasurable things, which was to fit the two replica poster boards.

Here they are with the supporting battens attached, ready to go up.

The original 1904 station had such advertising posters on every available space on the platform side, so we put these two in the niche for the toilets, where they brighten up an otherwise darker area.

Poster job done, Neal moved on to the third job of the day, which was to pursue fitting of the timbers on the last two sections of the Cotswolds side steps.




In other business:

Yours truly has always been interested in railway clocks, and was interested in seeing the cast iron clock faces on many of the minor railway stations while on holiday in France.

The clocks there have a double face in a weighty cast iron triangular box, which was mounted on the platform side of the building. The hands were operated by a spindle that came through the wall and which was driven by a regulator (clock) that was in the stationmaster's office.

While the regulators are fairly common today (they come up on Ebay) the cast iron double clock face is not. There were two types - plain, more or less circular, and with an extra scroll underneath, described in the Paul Garnier catalogue as 'riche'.

The 'rich' one in the pictures below is now surplus to requirements in the blogger's garage, and is looking for a new home.

Restored interior, complete with spindle and gear wheels.

Outside face.

An original in situ.

But how to find this new home? As the clock casing is obviously French, it is not suitable for a UK railwayana auction. Is there a museum that would be interested? Put it on Ebay France, but how would you ship that, as cast iron is heavy and fragile?

Any suggestions or interest among blog readers?