Spring is here

Saturday with the PWay gang.

Six of us on Saturday, and a hot and sunny day it was too.

We were spoilt by Tim, who brought a dozen creamy cupcakes, left over from a village fair. What a start to the day. 

We kept them under cover until lunch time, and attacked the 20 or so doughnuts that Bert brought for us.

In the middle is a big tea pot. That helps to wash it all down.

 

Then we went to work. We look at what was done on Wednesday, and could carry on from there, or address any new issues that have come up since.

For Saturday that meant three people going to Peasebrook to check out a potential twist in the track, while the other three stayed behind to carry on emptying the ELK bogie flats that are filled with the timbers and rails removed from the Toddington crossover replacements.

Dave was in the Telehandler. A week earlier it was in at Halls for a service, so we couldn't do this.

Dave paused his unloading activities to let 35006 past, having collected our eager passengers from CRC with the first train of the day.

 

 

 

 

After the timbers were unloaded and sorted (well, many of them) it was the turn of the rails and turnout parts.

Here Dave has picked up the lifting frame, with which the rails can be moved about.

Moments later Dave was on his way with a 60ft length, which was carefully placed on the pile just off camera on the right.

In between times we had to pause to let the trains through. You can just see the Telehandler on the left with one of the two crossings.

These two turnouts could become useful if we re-jig the C&W yard with a view to servicing a carriage storage shed. Nothing is thrown away here.

Three of us were taking apart some of the sleepers that could not be stripped earlier, as they had GWR through bolters on them.

Here is one, tipped on its side. The sleeper is no longer usable, but the throughbolter clings on. If you try to undo the bolt from the top, the bottom, with the nut, just twirls round as it's rusted on solid. Not a good way of securing a chair if you ever want to replace the sleeper. As you can see in the picture above, we have to cut the bolts off with a rail saw.

One chair, a square one which is part of the turnout, was particularly difficult to remove as we couldn't get the rail saw into it.

The other way of removing old throughbolters is to split the sleeper in half. This is what Tim and Nick are trying to do here. The sleeper, although no longer usable, was particularly reluctant to split.

At the end of the afternoon almost all of the two ELKS were unloaded, with a few elements of the turnout remaining on the second. All of the chairs, including a handful of throughbolters had also been removed. Just before 4 o'clock we treated ourselves to tea at the Coffeepot, waiting for the last and diesel hauled train ex Toddington.

Dave, will you be 'mother'?

Just after 4 o'clock the Peak rumbled into the station, with P&O waiting opposite for the road to Toddington.

P&O is a magnificent beat, so come and enjoy it before there is no more coal. It seems that it is preferrable to import coal from 5200 miles away, rather than from nearby Cumbria or Wales. The environmental impact that way is far worse, as is the economic impact on our modest little bit of history - coal prices, imported from 5200 miles away, have gone through the roof.

The driver of P&O leans out to see round the curve, before moving off under a clear signal.

Tuesday at Broadway

We're concentrating our efforts on the handrails now. A local carpenter shaped the wood for us, and yours truly spent Tuesday giving a topcoat to the brackets, which we had shotblasted and zinc coated a couple of years back now.

All our handrail brackets in the their top coat. It looks like we are 4 short.

We have straight lengths of handrail, and these curved transition sections, carved out of a single block of Sapele.

Here Neal is preparing one of the transitions by cutting a hole inboard from the end

After painting the brackets, yours truly moved on to the special non slip treads we have to use. They have a very garish yellow stripe, and it was agreed we would change this to a more heritage friendly white. As the white tends to spatter a bit we did it outside, pausing only to let a large engine trundle by.

The hole Neal drilled receives the lock nut for lengths of threaded bar with which the various pieces of handrail are held together.

From on top of the centre span we always get a good view of the goings on. Soon you will be able to do this too.

With the brackets dry, Neal was able to start fitting the first few, having previously marked out the line that the hand rails will follow.

An issue was the very large holes in the brackets, and the thin boarding on which they are screwed - this will need screws of gauge 20 and only 1 inch long. We tried to get slotted screws to make the fittings look old, but no luck in the local hardware store. It's a weird size.

At the end of the afternoon Neal had done very well already.

Don't the handrails look good?

They still need varnishing.

Wednesday with the Usketeers

A beautiful, crisp day. As so often, we started with a quick coffee in our 'Welfare Facility', leaving Jules outside. It's rather rude, isn't it?

Jules paying penance for not bringing any cake....

Joking apart, Jules is being very careful, still for Covid reasons, as there is someone in his family who can't afford to be exposed.

Dave and yours truly took to block laying again, leaving three doing other jobs - see below. We have just about run out of both sand and cement, but there was enough to do one mix today, which can be sufficient if the block laying is slow and complicated (which it was, today). We worked on the facade that faces the side of the cutting, continuing a line of blocks that will cover the lintel placed last week.

While we were doing that Paul and Jules arrived and shoved a long length of 4x2 past our noses, and mounted it on temporary bricks. That was to illustrate the level of the wall plate. That wall plate will be in the middle of the 16 inch thick wall, so with a sloping roof the outside of the wall needs to be lower, and that threw out our plans for block sizes for the last row somewhat. We are indeed almost there on this facade.

Underneath John was doing sterling work on pulling thousands of nails out of the ex garden centre timber recovered last week, even as Paul and Jules already started using it to make the first of the trusses. It's all so fast!

We asked Paul how it was all going to work with that wall pate, so he drew a bit of a sketch. 

At least someone knows what they are doing round here.

There may or may not be a gutter as well. Originally there was no gutter, but we think the stonework would be better off without being splashed at low level, and we have had an offer of second hand cast iron guttering.

 

Meanwhile, trains ran this way and that, reasonably well filled we saw.

Ready with that hoop?

Almost there - don't drop it now!

Back at the ranch, Paul and Jules laid out our sample truss recovered from Usk, and started to lay out new (- second hand) wood around it.

More hoops are exchanged during the day. None dropped though.

Paul and Jules then put up the second sample wall plate on little piles of bricks, to show the height. The thickness of the course over the arch looks a bit thin, but Paul assured us that we could make it thicker if we wanted, there was some flexibility available.

Paul and Jules then laid a long piece of timber from one side to the other, purpose not clear to this co-worker.

All part of the plan. Obviously the two wall plates need to be parallel and level as well.

Then they started putting the first truss together. The original truss was very basic, just three lengths of wood nailed together, although with joints where they met.

The 4x2s then had to be cut for length. Eventually we will also need to treat them for woodworm, as not all the timber we recovered was clear of it, even if still sound. We bought 5L of special treatment for it.

Taking a step back, here is a shot of the first truss trial fitted to the end of the building, on a pair of wall plates also not yet formally in pace. It's all just to get the dimensions right. The legs also need to be trimmed (no, it's not going to be a lean-to)

Hold on there, Jules, we're going for a quick cup off coffee and will be back later...

Dave continued with his blocks, even as the end of a truss was swaying around him, which resulted in a lot of merriment. The two teams were fighting for the same space.

 

 

Trial fit completed, the new truss was wrangled down again and carried off for further fettling.

Today it was warm enough for the first time this year to have our lunch outside -  see garden chairs. The good days are back again.

 

 

Dave completed the run of blocks started first thing, and with a shovel full of mortar left over at the end he bedded down a 9 inch block by the quoin on the right here. Together, these two blocks will make enough room to support the final quoin on this corner, a 5 inch oblong we have been saving for just this occasion. It's already been fetched out of storage, and is waiting, askance, at the bottom of the picture.

Before placing this quoin, the inside will need to be backed up for two levels - we are looking at Jules, and hope he is up for it next week.

We are planning to get a dumpy bag of sand on Friday, ready for next week, as well as three more bags of cement. There is still quite a lot of stone about - the chimney corner (which is quite fat) will swallow that, as well as the two gable ends.

In other news today, the PWay gang spent all day on stacking sleepers. One party went round Toddington and CRC recovering leftovers from the relays there with the white Landie, the other continued the transfer of some 400 concrete sleepers from one side of the yard to the other. Hope this is the last time! We may well be using them soon.

By the buffer stop Rob and Pete were laying blues inside and out. This job has moved up the priority list, as there is a wish to reinstate the roadway round the buffer stop, and past the Usk hut, and to do that the hole in which Rob is standing needs to be filled up.

 

Back at home, we came across the curious annual phenomenon of Cotswolds lambs racing. Soon after birth, they gang together and absolutely race around the field, then pause on some unseen signal, and race back in the other direction. Why do they do it? A few days later they stop, and grow up to be boring sheep.

Here's a little video of them, taken today:

https://youtu.be/VplFoqxdrrg

The appalling invasion by a neighbour of Ukraine prompted us to dig out the pictures we took 20 years ago while on a rail tour there.

The pictures are currently being scanned and cleaned, and when done will be posted on our Flickr site.

Here is a foretaste. Not all of Ukraine is flat, the western end has the Carpathian mountains and is very pretty and quite rural. This is our hotel train (Dzherelo, or Spring) drawn by a huge 0-10-0 E class loco, the most numerous locomotive type in the world, and one you have probably never seen though. It's big.

Check out the lovely little haystack in the RH corner - remember those? We loved that country.