Superaerobatic.

Saturday under a bright sun.

'Weather warnings'? What are those? Much of our weather is now accompanied by 'warnings'. But life goes on, and our gang of 7 on the PWay carried on as normal on Saturday.

 

We were disturbed in our morning musings over doughnuts by a gang member who is a Boeing Stearman pilot in his day job. He texted that he'd be flying over us in 5 minutes!

We rushed outside, still munching, and there they were!

Just as they flew over us, the nearest plane released a white cloud.

There's no need to shower us in leftover seawater, Dave :-)

What an enjoyable meeting that was. Wonder where they were off to, they were heading west.

 

Our intention was to continue fishplate greasing - we have a bout 10 miles to do, so it's quite a stretch - but on signing on we found an instruction to check out rough riding at Peasebrook, so we did that first.

So what are they finding over there? Looks alright from where I'm standing...

We checked the length between Little Buckland and Peasebrook Farm, and found various anomalies, which the annual tamping should correct again. Nothing too serious though.

We then let the scheduled train pass.

A very modern looking train, headed by one of our class 47s. Steve looks on.

The return journey picture, ruined by a slow camera shutter.

We had the cross level with us so took a large number of readings, which are being discussed here by Bert and Jim.

 

 

The upshot was that we decided to put on a Temporary Speed Restriction (TSR) of 10mph. Some corrective packing will be done on Wednesday.

Luckily we were ready for that possible TSR, so we had loaded the right boards back at the farm.

 

 

Then we went back to the mess coach for lunch. That said, the tinny mess coach gets unbearably hot under a persistent sun, so we decided to patronise the Coffepot and its luxurious canopy instead.

Our other diesel today was 37 215.

 

 

 

After lunch it was that fishplate greasing after all, continuing from where we left off last time (the start of the Gretton straight). Dave stayed behind while we were at Peasebrook, and on our return announced proudly that he had found the fault with the failed backpack pump, and repaired it. So we had two backpacks again today. Phew!

 

Yours truly had brought the wherewithal to remove more of the pink graffiti that we treated at Working Lane, clearly the place the little vandal had used to get on the line. He had walked all the way up to Greet tunnel, tagging several bits of signalling along his walk, and drinking from a quart plastic bottle of juice as he went, which he tossed on the ground by the tunnel. We retrieved that, as well as a cider bottle a bit further along.

 

The final bit of tagging was on the brand new Greet tunnel sign, the one we admired a few weeks back.

We cleaned that off, so here it is back to 'as new' condition. Graffiti has to be treated straight away, to show that it is not worth the effort as it will soon be removed again.

The Greet tunnel mouth is getting increasingly covered in brambles, and these could do with being removed, as the roots damage the brickwork.

 

We caught up with the others on the approaches to Gretton.

Next to applying the Interflon with two backpacks, we also replaced quite a few highlighted Mills keys with Panlocks.

They won't come out again!

As Tim pulled in another Panlock, Bert marched past with his backpack on.

We paused by this bridge to let train 2 by, parking the Landie on the former up line.

Train 2 was hauled by 37 215, not too visible here as against the sun. Unfortunately it is not a good idea to stand on the opposite side of the track to the rest of the gang, so we have to content ourselves with a shot into the sun.

The 47 on the other hand was captured on the Preston Road bridge, with the sun behind the camera. Bodywork in the shade is the only complaint here, but the colours are nice.

On the left is a fully laden Walnut tree. The walnut harvest looks to be particularly good this year, but nobody will be picking these.

We were here to turn the Landie round, then back down the track to pick up the backpacks. We said we'd do a mile in the afternoon, then reward ourselves with an ice cream.

And there we are, outside the Coffeepot. Strange, no two ice creams were the same, but all were lovely on this hot day.

From L to R: Dave, Tim, Jim, Adam, and Steve under that hat. Bert was inside, organising the tea.

A brief interlude:

On our travels about Gloucestershire, we've always got one eye open for lamp posts... and are they perhaps GWR ones?

How about this one? Well, closer inspection revealed that it was indeed a railway one, but of Midland origin.

It appears this one has a few brothers and sisters further up the drive, and they all come from Ashchurch, a junction with several platforms.

Well, we guess that is indeed Midland...

Monday at Toddington.

A few hours at Toddington for various discussions, and a bit of fabrication in anticipation of a (hopefully positive) outcome to our offer to build P2 at Broadway.

4270 was in the Toddington car park, waiting to be collected. We paired it with the bus that has been stickered with Stanway viaduct.

Also at Toddington, a supporter of the railway has retrieved and restored the former Boxford booking office (Lambourne branch). He's done a pukka job of restoring it, including the reinstatement of the boarded up windows.

If asked nicely, he would be willing for it to be used somewhere on the railway.

In other news, a 'Griddle Hut' along the lines of the CRC 'Snack shack' is under consideration for Winchcombe, platform 1. Would that add to, or detract from the heritage atmosphere?

On the apron by the steam shed the Deltic visitor has been stabled next to two recently restored coal wagons. These were once heavily graffitied, and now look so much better. They hold our emergency stockpile.

In the David page shed Neal was working on the three posts that will hold up the bottom of the P2 steps at Broadway, as well as the canopy extension from the replica Waiting Room that he is prepared to build there.

 

Here is Neal making the boxes that will surround the bottom of the posts. They will be so shaped that they will give the posts an appearance as if made of cast ion, as we did on P1.

Where the wider boxes will run into the narrower uprights strips of angled metal will be welded on and shaped.

In this picture Neal is cutting the strips out of a 10mm plate.

 

 

 

On a quick trip to Winchcombe we were dismayed to find that yet another modern adornment had been screwed to the stone Monmouth Troy building.

It's that grey arm top centre. This is on top of the B&Q spotlight next to the heritage lamp (do you really need both?) with its additional PIR detectors, and lengths of plastic cable running along the wall.

The grey arm seems to be a WiFi receiver. The Friends of Winchcombe Station were taken by surprise by this modern fitting to the station that they look after. It went up about 3 weeks ago. We really ought to have a Heritage Conservation Panel on our railway, to protect the museum structures that we have built.

Our Cotton Sturdy makes a splash.

Our Friends of Winchcombe Station attended the meeting of the Cotton Motorcycle Owner's Club at Gloucester. This took place behind 'Folk at Gloucester' (the former folk museum in the 16thC Bishop Hooper's lodging)

Cotton motorcycles meet at Gloucester

No, we don't have any Cotton motorcycles at Winchcombe, but we do have another Cotton product: The Sturdy. It's normally kept in working order in the corrugated iron shed at the top end of P2 at Winchcombe.

Two members of the FoWS attended the rally, armed with a GWR Trust stand, and our working Sturdy.

Here it is by our stand, in a fictitious but credible late period GWR livery. It's got a Briggs & Stratton engine.

Ian reverses the Sturdy back onto its trailer.

The Vulcan Works where the Cotton motorbikes were made was just over the road from the back entrance to Folk at Gloucester - there is even a blue plaque to mark the association.

 

There was plenty of interest from those attending the event and one fellow actually joined the GWSR

with the object of becoming an active volunteer. There were 2 other Sturdys there but we think ours

was the only one currently in working order. The onlookers were impressed when we drove it away

and backed it up the ramp on to the trailer. 

Wednesday with the Usketeers.

A cool day at last, and with a full complement of five we were productive too.

We started the day with some adjustments to our trestles, so that we could work simultaneously from both the inside and the outside.

Dave kicked off on the inside, where the centre portion of the backing up hadn't been completed last week.

Jules can be seen watching him from below. With all the safety screens we had to climb in through the window today to get to the inside. All the stones were passed though the window, and of course the mortar too.

 

 

 

We're running diesels at the moment, so what would we have today? 

 

The answer was this Peak, which is waiting here by the box for its opposite number to arrive. That would be 37 215.

The crew of the Peak were a cheerful lot, and quite happy to pose for a picture. Well, so would you, if you were allowed to drive this beast.

Guys, if you want a personal copy of the picture, email the blog at breva2011 (at) hotmail.co.uk.

A contribution to the Usk hut rebuild never goes amiss....

 

 

With traffic to-ing and fro-ing and Dave and Jules laying blocks, John, yours truly and Paul decided to have a closer look at exactly what slates managed to make it from the ruin in Usk goods yard back to Winchcombe. We took a picture of John sorting them out, but the camera decided it wasn't going to play, and the image wasn't there when we uploaded our pics just now. Oh well, so you'll have to take our word for it.

We reckon we have some 200 original slates. How many do we actually need though?

Here is Paul doing a test layout. He came to the conclusion that we need 12 per m2. It's that many because they overlap not only from side to side, but upwards and downwards too. In the end you only get to use one quarter of the surface of each slate.

After a quick measure of the loose truss, we got to 30m2 for the roof area, so that makes 360 slates.

 

 

Another factor to bear in mind for the calculation is the quality of the slate. You can check this by tapping it. If it rings it's OK. If it makes a noise like hitting a piece of stiff cardboard, it's no longer usable, as fractured somewhere. 

So we need something like another 200 slates. Luckily there are a couple of stillages of similar slates in the other half of the yard (we think formerly from Exminster box) so that should allow us to construct a sympathetic looking roof.

Jules was working on the outside, and given last week's backing up was able to start on the third row above the lintel, now firmly part of the pointed gable end.

He's laying 5 inch blocks here. On the right you can see one with a number on it - most have disappeared already, so that idea never worked in practice.

Once he had completed the backing up of the middle bit left over from last week, Dave started outside as well, working towards Jules from the opposite end.

Not all the blocks are in perfect condition. One here is missing a corner, so Dave made it a little triangular plug, which he is fitting in the picture.

 

Lunch time came all too soon. This time we had another treat from Mrs. Dave:

Lemon drizzle cake, served with silver cake tongs! That tasted extra good.

While the team munched and drank coffee, we had a quick look upstairs for a picture unobstructed by legs and burly builders:

This is the northern gable end on its way up, with the third course half finished. We were having some issues with the joints, which weren't coming out right (not staggered enough).

All cake eaten, Dave was soon back with the blocks, which, while we had all the lengths right, we had to take down again and refit in a different order to respect the rules about overlapping joints.

Nae bother though.

 

 

Later in the day we too climbed in through the window for this picture of the inside of the gable end:

This is the back of the three courses. Without the dressed stones - for the outside only - it's a lot more higgeldy piggeldy, but you can see that the middle was filled in as described earlier, and indeed an extra bit added on top.

Our last shot of the day shows Dave near the corner, and here you can see how the slope is becoming more evident, following the line up to the top.

By Christmas, maybe. We'll see.

Then we got a visit from some of the returning PWay chaps - back from packing the dip at Little Buckland - and they wondered if we wanted to join them for a last cup of tea in the Coffeepot.

We did!

Members of the PWay gang, with our Paul centre left, looking grumpy. That's normal then.

 

 

There was a slight drama during the day, twice in fact. We saw the signalman walk out with a huge red flag, and the incoming train crawl to a stop next to him.

The flag was to inform the drivers that there were trespassers along the line, not once, but twice! Two different lots.

The things we have to put up with.