Two lintels go on.

Friday at Toddington

A visit to a local supplier of natural sandstone paving slabs was made, to consider a new floor of the Usk hut. The old floor, also made of sandstone slabs, was sadly shattered after 170 years of use, and we could only recover a handful of useable slabs. In fact the floor needs lifting by about 6 inches, to bring it up to the DPC from the concrete foundation slab. That will be done with a weak concrete mix, and new slabs laid on top. We still need to have a conversation about whether to get completely new slabs, or second hand ones somehow. But the colour needs to match the original.

The very rusty lamp post from Bentley Heath has now been cleaned, treated with Kurust, and painted in a white undercoat to preserve it while in storage.

A quick call at Toddington found the loco yard abuzz, it had a real steam shed atmosphere.

There were 3 locos in steam, for three race train specials. The locos had returned to base mid-day to await collection of the happy punters at the end of the day, and were simmering on shed while being resupplied with Shotton coal, with some Ovoids mixed in to use them up.

 

 

 

Outside, by the path to the lighting up store, Neal and John were test fitting the newly made floor for the platform that will go on the yard lamp recovered from the garden in Frome.

This post apparently didn't have a platform (as we found it, the ladder led straight up to the ladder bars) and as such didn't have any holes in the stem for the bolts holding the platform on. That is what they are drilling in the picture.

Rod in the machine shop has done a lovely job on refreshing the rollers for the Usk hut sliding windows. It's very kind of the loco dept. to help us with this.

One of the old rollers is visible at the top of the picture. As it had become stuck it no longer revolved, it just slid along and became 'D' shaped.

Saturday on the PWay.

Back with the gang, after a nearly 3 month absence. The intense, 5 days a week, Broadway canopy work completely took over for yours truly until it was finished two weeks ago. It's getting a lot of praise, except for that white security camera.

It was good to be back on the gang, and to the time honoured ritual of doughnuts, tea and banter.

The job on Saturday was to pack a small track deformation by the former trap point coming off the Toddington North carriage siding, and to shovel a lot of ballast in that area.

We had a few minutes after the departure of the second train to get the trolley on the rails, put all the tools on it, and push it out to the work site about 1/4 mile away. Then the first train would be back from CRC with eager tourists for Broadway.

The sun was out, but early in the morning P&O just showered the team in droplets of steam as they stood ready with the tools.

Dave F and yours truly were volunteered to stay behind and make a start on clearing the car park of the leftovers from the professional turnout replacement over the winter. This meant principally the removal of a large number of chairs and associated hardware. The timbers from the old turnout were too long and heavy to fit the little Landie.

An hour later saw us back at Winchcombe with a load of chairs, which we added to the pile in the background.

As a return journey we loaded the Landie with the dreaded GWR throughbolters, which we don't like, but the 2807 group can usefully turn into boot scrapers that they sell to raise funds. They pay us a little contribution in return.

At the end of the afternoon the main part of the gang came back with their trolley, exhausted after a day's ballast shovelling. The reward was a round of teas in the sun outside the Coffeepot at Winchcombe. It was almost warm enough for ice cream - almost. Maybe next time.

 

Wednesday on the Usk hut.

The first of the hot days. We got there at 9 o'clock as usual but - way too late!

Well Hi there, do come and join us.

 

Paul and Dave were already there, had got all the tools and trestle safety barriers out, and were relaxing in the sun on our deck chairs. The first time this year.

Today was going to be interesting, as we had accepted the challenge from Richard of C&W, restoring the Toad brake van, to provide the concrete mix to fill special formers he had made. The blocks that would ultimately come out of these would be used as ballast weights in the bottom of the van.

The lumps of scrap iron found in the bottom of the van when the restoration started were sold off, and as a very kind gesture to help the Usk team, we were given £100 of the proceeds to help us along a bit.

Door lintel waiting to be installed.

Also a project for today was this heavy duty lintel, which had been sourced, galvanised and painted by yours truly, with the kind financial help of readers of this blog. Thanks, guys! This is what we did with the money.

Last week we brought in one of the two lintels for the windows; the thired waiting its turn in store.

 

As Richard from C&W was a bit pressed for time he asked us to get going straight away, no messing about with doughnuts, coffee or cake. As if we would! The reward, we were assured, was a coffee and walnut cake, which he produced just to tempt us.

Dave pulling that cord right out.

Thus tempted, we started up Maxie the Mixer, wasting no time.

Will you do it for a slice of cake, Maxie?

Unfortunately this was the day Maxie had been waiting for, when all eyes were on her to produce. She refused at the first hurdle. Not only would she not start in whatever position or combination of choke that we tried, she let her pull cord flop out so that it would no longer recoil and we couldn't even try to start her.

Temptation with a bit of coffee and walnut cake didn't work either. Now what?

We decided to have some of the coffee and walnut cake ourselves, to see if that would help. Not having produced any concrete yet we didn't really deserve it, and you could almost taste the bitterness and guilt in the cake. But we ate it anyway.

Petrol was coming through we decided, but after extracting the plug with some difficulty we realised there was no spark. So either a problem with the plug, or else with the magneto. 

We decided that a 'heart and lung operation' was needed, so took off the engine and gearbox.

A stand in replacement was sourced - meet 'Sparky' the mixer! He's very modern, being all electric. No fuel worries for us here. He absolutely purred away, but it wasn't until after lunch that we were finally able to extract a mix from him. A wasted half day for us, and a frustrating day for Richard, to who we convey our apologies. Richard managed to get his blocks cast nonetheless, so the damage done was more to our pride and just a little bit to his time.

Maxie's heart and lungs were taken out and parked. At the end of the day Dave took them home in the wife's car, after draining the petrol to prevent spillage - we hoped.

Will this be a kitchen table restoration at home? Does Mrs. Dave realise? See next week's thrilling instalment.

The other job we had in mind for today was to build the arch, using the formers Neal installed last week. Alas, due to the mixer failure we will need to put this off by a week, but we did a little test today, and this is the arrangement for the bricks, combining both inner and outer rings, that we are going to have.

 

 

 

Thanks to 'Sparky' we were at last able to have a mix made then, so Dave and Paul took up position on the corner worked on last week to continue backing up, and also to prepare the levels for the lintel over the door.

Dave backing up.

Dave in a sea of stone blocks from Usk.

Here you can see some backing up in the foreground, with Dave working his way round to the door frame on the left.

Then we propelled the heavy 10mm thick steel lintel up and over the door frame. No picture of that, as we were all heaving and pushing. We got it up there OK, it was right straight away, we could hardly believe it.

We had the level on it, and after just a few taps on one end it passed inspection and we left it at that for the mortar to go off.

As we still had some mortar left, we decided to do the lintel over the window as well. This one is shorter so not quite so heavy, and it too went on without any problems.

With still another spot full of mortar left, and quite late in the afternoon, Dave bedded down two six inch blocks between last week's quoin on the corner, and the lintel over the door placed today. This area is now the highest point on the building. 

We won't go any higher until we have seen where we come out with the last course over the arch, as that is the level the rest of the two sides have to aim for. The two ends will rise further after that to make up the gable ends.

That was it for today, which was quite an eventful one. After a morning of frustration (albeit with walnut cake) we did get quite a lot done by the end of the afternoon, so were able to return home to our loved ones with that lovely feeling of satisfaction.

The picture above shows the state of play with the platform post from Bentley Heath - it's now been fully cleaned, rust treated, and put into a preserving undercoat. We've also marked it up, so that it wouldn't get lost in the yard - you never know.

An unexpected issue was that we were unable to see through from one end to the other. There was some sort of obstruction in it, something we had never seen before. After borrowing a long length of metal water pipe from Toddington and hammering on that quite a bit the obstruction eventually shot out as this piece of conduiting, and armoured cable. Thank goodness it did eventually decide to come out, otherwise the whole post would be useless if we can't run a power cable up the inside of it.

There's another asset retrieval in the wings as well, more of which in a fortnight.