Before we open.

Friday at Toddington

As the weather was rather unsettled for outside work - we still have to finish the footbridge steps - we decided to work in the loco shed at Toddington on Friday.

 

 

There we were met by the hired in B&R tamper, which had positioned itself on the unloading road for attention to a leaking hydraulic hose.

 

Neal went off to help some interesting shunting movements in front of the shed.

4270 was in steam and needed a topping up with water, with Neal on the end of the chain opening the valve in the water tower.

In the loco shed itself John started work on a new platform for the GWR yard lamp recovered from a garden in Frome. That lamp had no platform - a common issue - but did have a ladder, which went all the way to the top (instead of up to the platform as per drawing). The Frome lamp also had two overly long ladder bars, which have been straightened by members of the loco dept and shortened to the correct length.

In the picture the framework for the bottom of the platform is being made up, with holes for the 10mm rods that go through it.

4270 then came into the shed to retrieve 35006, leading to this lovely cloud of steam as the regulator was opened to reverse back outside.

Outside, Neal was drawn to the mystery of the hydraulic hose failure in the tamper...

Earlier at Broadway he removed the now redundant downpipe on the corner of the building. It has been replaced by two downpipes further along, one down each column under the truss.

The removal of this down pipe gives us the room for a pair of quad royal poster boards here. We're still looking for 1904 style posters (not the colourful 1930s type) and after some research, have concluded that the key to the date is the name of the GWR General Manager underneath - this needs to be J L Wilkinson (and not Felix Pole or James Milne, who worked in the 1920s and 30/40s)

During a couple of idle hours Neal also completed the boarding on the Malvern side of the P2 steps at Broadway. The Cotswolds side is waiting for some drier weather.

We also had time and opportunity - with the scaffolding down at last - to fit the PASSENGERS are requested to CROSS the LINE by the BRIDGE sign. It's securely bolted on to two 1899 rails (marked 'Crewe'!) and very heavy.

Just to remind you - this is the more severe version of the same notice, seen at Carrog. We liked the genteel version, and went out of our way to find an example - not easy at all. Eventually we were helped by a friendly blog reader who sold us his for a symbolic price.

Monday at Broadway.

The LADIES ROOM and GENTLEMEN signs have had their metalwork (straps, hangers and letters) shotblasted and powder coated, and were taken back to Broadway on Monday.

They were taken off as they were in the way of the scaffolding, and on closer inspection were found to be rusting.

Neal put them back up, moving the GENTLEMEN sign a bit to one side to be more in line with the LADIES.

Then it was time for more construction work.

The last big thing missing on the footbridge is the completion of the boarding on P2. All the boards are ready and numbered, and were test fitted earlier in time for the pre Christmas trains.

The boards are all individually cut to size, so have been numbered for easy re - fitting.

Well, that's the theory anyway.

During a break, Neal took down some details of the relative locations of the corner of the building and the supporting posts. This is to help him work out the same locations on P2, where the situation is slightly different, as the misalignment of the bridge with the building is only minor.

He also made a little barrier to prevent access to the footbridge until it is ready for use. It's rather kinder to the eye than the previous Heras fencing and corrugated iron panels.

Neal then slowly worked his way down the steps. It started to feel much more closed in here, and of course it will be more protected from the rain.

The boards have been in storage for several months (after numerous layers of paint were applied) and came back with pencil numbers on top.

So why have we got two No.12s, and where is 23? Who put those numbers on!

At the end of the afternoon Neal was about half way down.

We should now be thinking about the repair work of the Winchcombe and Toddington canopies, but we are not in a position to start yet as various replacement pieces are not yet supplied. It takes time to organise this, and with the Covid crisis and shortages in the building industry there are plenty of reasons why something hasn't arrived yet.

Watch this space...

Wednesday with the Usketeers.

With Dave affording himself and Mrs. Dave a short holiday in Devon, we were reduced to just the three of us today - Paul, John, and yours truly. 

With one hand down, we concentrated on completing a few special jobs, which will ready us for the next stage: the lintels and the brick arch over the big window.

Last week we placed the buttress block (under the green gloves) and today we cut around it to make the end fit for receiving blue bricks set at an angle.

In the picture the corner of the window frame is being trimmed to align it with the arch former that it has.

 

In this picture you can see how the piece removed has given the arch former a smooth curve right to the end.

Next we laid a sample brick and drew a (green) line on the buttress block to show the angled face it needs for the first of the arch bricks.

 

The next picture, taken from the same viewpoint, shows that angle now cut, and the sample brick perfectly placed next to it.

We will now invite Neal, who has kindly made us a former for that part of the arch not immediately above the window frame, to place the former in position. You may well see that next week.

The buttress at the other end was also cut to the correct angle, but here we have one large and two smaller blocks, which had to be trimmed to fit. So this end is now also ready, once the mortar has had a week to go off.

Paul them backed up the whole corner, but from the outside, where the trestle was. This corner is now nice and level, so we have a level surface from one corner, round the next and up to the big window, This will allow us to start bringing the lintels out of storage.

 

Paul then moved to the next corner, and bedded down these two 5 inch blocks between the quoins. We'll need two more 3 inch ones to make the top of these quoins, then that corner is at the same height too.

 

 

 

To add a bit of meat to the trimmed down buttress block we found an 8 inch block, one of the bigger ones still in the pile, to fill a 13 inch gap we had. That's the big piece of stone centre left.

 

 

After lunch we made a second mix, and used that to address the area next to the door frame. The far side is up to lintel height; this side wasn't yet, but today we rummaged around and found a big block with two faces and a nice corner that filled the area immediately in front of the top of the door frame in this picture.

The missing piece went in here.

While we were fettling away at blocks, we heard a high up roaring - 2x B52 bombers, 8 jet engines far above the clouds. Good luck to you, guys!

Near the end of the day we went to take our usual snapshot of the state of play, but found that it was no longer high enough for you to see what was going on. 

This picture then was taken from the top of the cutting, hard up against the neighbour's fence. Just about....

A similar view could be had from the vantage point of the S&T trolley. You can see clearly here how the wall is now up to the lintels (with a bit more work to do round the fourth corner at the back) and that there is a slight lower area over the big window where the arch will go in.

The arch will have two rows of bricks, then another row of stones on top, and that should achieve what is known as wall plate level (although it looks as if the building didn't have wall plates - we shall see). Once we know that height, we can complete the rest of the building around and up to it.

As we left, feeling very satisfied with progress, we met the tamper returning from the southern part of the line.

 

 

 

Later in the afternoon, the replacement tamper was being loaded on the unloading road at Toddington.

Note the clever stilts, which allow the trailer to be pushed underneath. It's an 08 type Plasser from the hire company Trackwork.

Picture by Bob Lock, for which our thanks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is not the B&R tamper, which is being repaired. It's an emergency hire at some cost to the company. 

It looks like the B&R tamper will return for a final fling, before we re-open. It's a mad rush to the end, but we did do a helluvva lot of work this winter, more than ever before. Well done the team (s)!

Broadway signal box.

Broadway signal box is, sadly, still not open for this new season. What's going on?

Broadway box at the end of 2015 - externally complete.

It's a question we have asked ourselves several times, as each proposed opening year was postponed once again. After all, we helped to build it, and the box was essentially complete at the start of 2016, now 6 years ago. Six years!

Broadway box was the first replica structure on the once bare station site. We decided to build it first, as a test case to see how the team would do, before moving on to the much larger project of the station building itself. And the station building is now of course also finished, even with the final and complicated part of the canopy along P1, and the station has already operated for 3 seasons.

So why not the signal box? The frame is in, the signals are planted, the rodding runs laid, there's power in the box and it's connected to its sister at Toddington. 

A sentence in the latest 'Cornishman' explains:

'For full commissioning, we await money availability for a platform 2 waiting room and finished platform surface, and extra signalling persons to staff it.'

These are not insurmountable problems. We have the canopy gang who are ready and keen to progress the P2 waiting room. Completion of the platform surfacing requires the foundation slab of the waiting room to be in. That would be a good start, a bite sized project, for a modest outlay of say £20.000.

As for more signalmen, how about joining us? You could make the difference. You'd be very welcome, and then you'd have the chance to work in the new GWR box that gets bathed in the setting sun, the replica of Shirley box that used to stand further up the line. We'd love to hear from you.

What do people think?