Last one this year

Friday clearing snow

A desperate appeal came from the Santa organisers - heeeeeelp! The Winchcombe platform is under 4ins of snow and ice, and the next day trains would be bringing happy children to see Santa. Please come and help clear snow - bring your own shovels.

18 people heeded the call. A pretty good result.

 

We know it's all going to melt on Sunday, but Santa services resume on Saturday, and it's forecast to freeze again overnight.

The 18 set to with snow shovels, garden spades and brooms.

Ice on the left, snow on the right.

Yours truly had a snow shovel left over from the big snow at the end of 2010. It worked fine, but it soon became apparent that under the snow was a layer of thin ice formed by trampled footprints that had solidified. So pushing the snow off was only half the job.

Here the platform edge has been swept, but you wouldn't know it. 

What to do?

We managed to find some rock salt in Evesham, so took the blue Transit down there to get 10 bags.

Lots of rock salt, ready to go.

The rock salt finally did the trick, melting the compressed ice, ready for the big arrival. We've still got a few bags in reserve in case something happens again overnight.

An icicle grows from a Mk1 coach.

After clearing the snow we were promised a mince pie and coffee as a reward.

Our just reward for clearing snow.

You had to be quick, it seems that the mince pies became available while we were at Evesham loading bags of rock salt. We just managed one of the last ones, and the dregs of the coffee. Phew!

In other news, a kind blog reader saw the difficulty we had with splitting the throughbolted sleepers to get the chairs off, and has offered us a brand new maul to help.

We hadn't come across this item before (we have had a restful, office based life....) so had to Google 'Maul' and came up with this result:

What is a maul tool?

 

A splitting maul also known as a block buster, block splitter, chop and maul, sledge axe, go-devil or hamaxe is a heavy, long-handled axe used for splitting a piece of wood along its grain. One side of its head is like a sledgehammer, and the other side is like an axe.

And this is what the kind blog reader bought us:

 

As you can see, it's a robust sort of axe, but thicker, so that when you drive it into the grain, it splits the wood. You then hammer it further in. It's got a pretty decent handle too.

We're very grateful for this kind donation. We're looking forward to having a good go with it, but that will be later next year, as we have the relay at Didbrook next on our list. We don't think it will split concrete sleepers....

Tuesday, and new rail.

The whole day (after the storm) was spent on unloading new rail from a lorry which had come from London with 24 brand new rails - 8 bullhead, and 16 FBs. They are destined in part to replace lesser quality rail in the main line (releasing that rail for sidings) and in part to go into stock, as we currently have no reserves of rail at all. Everything we had to spare went into the extension to Broadway.

Unloading the lorry from London.

The rail was picked up using our new beam. It's safer, but also quite slow if operated by Telehandler. Another thing that slowed us up was that the order the rails were stacked was wrong for us - we wanted the BH on top, which is where it also was on the lorry. So the BH had to be taken off and stored temporarily on the ground, and later double handled and also put on the Elk wagon, now on top of the FB rail. It took pretty much all day, luckily in mild weather.

Although Tuesday is mid-week, there were Santa trains terminating at Winchcombe.

At Lunch time one of the locos comes up to take water and effect a crew change. The low sun gave a very wintery effect here, although all of the snow had by then gone.

At the end of the day all 24 tons were stored neatly on  the Elk, ready for use. Now it has to go back to Winchcombe.

We had a few hours at Broadway too.

 

 

 

We found Ben, a new volunteer in our C&W department, at work on the Synchronome clock in the booking office. It's not yet running correctly, and on hearing that a new volunteer at Winchcombe was a clockmaker we had a chat, and Ben was willing to share his expertise with us.

The clock runs OK, but the slaves were having their own ideas.... a fix for this conundrum was hoped for on Wednesday, as we close.

 

Sad news about our new Broadway canopy, the loud speakers have indeed been installed. They are in full view, and bright white, much larger than the  CCTV cameras that we painted light stone so carefully.

Hello? Can you hear me?

There's also a grey plastic junction box fitted, to add to the modernism.

At the other end the loudspeaker has been screwed to within a few feet of the 'E FINCH' worksplate that we had copied specially to get the right 1904 effect.

There is currently no mechanism to prevent anyone at all from altering our historic substance at will. Holes have been drilled through walls, plastic electrical cable fitted in plain view, door knobs changed for modern handles, internet transponders fitted to facades, shelving fitted to original rooms and an internal wall broken out are some recent examples that spring to mind. 

To cap it all, the loudspeaker in the top picture was fitted to that part of the new canopy that has just been submitted to the HRA for a heritage award. Let's hope they don't come and look.

Wednesday with the Usketeers.

Still no scaffolding, but we have some good news here. The GWR Trust, our supporting charity, have kindly agreed for us to have a budget of up to £5000 for scaffolding hire, and other jobs to make the hut ready for viewing by our visitors. This means that we can finally place an order with the scaffolding company, and with a bit of luck we might be able to kick off in the new year. The tarpaulin has been reasonably waterproof so far, but we don't want to chance it for too long. Also, we are very keen to get going with the slates that we have sorted out.

Having said that the tarpaulin was reasonably waterproof, it was sorely tested last night when heavy rain came down, for a lengthy period. There are only 4 or 5 little leaks, but those drips over a whole night make for a very wet floor in the morning.

The Usk hut first thing, during the rain.

12m squared? What's that in proper feet?

We wiped down what we could. It rained heavily all morning, and from inside it sounded very bad indeed, under that canvas. Once outside, it seemed more moderate.

It was just as well that we couldn't work outside, as on receipt of that budget from the Trust we needed some time together to work out an order with our local building supplies company. At the same time we had coffee and macaroons, so the time under the rain was not wasted.

Today was a normal operating Santa day. It's all week now, so close to Christmas. Here's a train just coming in from CRC with expectant children. Some of the older ones, we heard, felt that a visit to Santa was beneath them, but on leaving they opened their present and were heard to exclaim 'Oh, cool!'. So he's not such a silly old chap after all.

Our big tank engine 427 was out today (together with Foremarke Hall) and at the end of the year she's out of ticket, and we won't be seeing her for quite a while. The immediate plans for the loco are not known.

So enjoy these last few shots of the 2-8-0 at work. Here it is, about to set off for Toddington for a crew change and some water.

Despite the rain, we had quite a few jobs to do inside the hut.

One was to make the door fit properly, and also drill a hole for the bolt to go in. We're also looking for some pink coloured slabs for the floor, and despite the rain we thought a visit (by car) to the local reclamation yard might produce something. That proved to be on Christmas holiday already, but once in the car, we went on to Toddington to visit the garden of a supporter, who said he had some Ogee guttering that we could have.

Ogee guttering found.

 

That visit proved fruitful. We obtained several lengths, enough for our needs (about 10 linear metres) as well as some corners and some of the bits where the downpipes start. What we didn't have were any downpipes themselves - anybody got some for us? We could also do with some end stops.

The stuff isn't new of course. We will strip it and repaint it next year, perhaps a job for John. Yours truly took home a bunch of brackets to clean and paint, something to do over the holiday absence (we're back on Jan 4th)

The guttering is of the smaller section, not the larger. The Usk hut probably didn't have any originally, but we think it would be better not to let the water spatter back up against the walls.

 

After lunch the sun came out, and we couldn't resist having a try out with our new stuff. How would it work, where does it attach?

Dave trying on a bracket on the end of a truss.

Dave with a section of guttering - what would it look like?

The same supporter - his garden pretty much resembles a professional reclamation yard - also had a variety of door knobs, locks and window latches for us to look at, and perhaps gratefully accept.

Which one should we chose?

We have 1 1/2 original latches - the receiving plate on one of them is missing. The shinier example is a brand new brass one, but it is too small for us to use. The big black box is a fairly substantial rim lock for the door, and we decided that it was ideal. Unfortunately that too is missing its receiving plate (as well as any keys, but we don't mind that as we have a bolt). There's a pair of door knobs that will do just fine, although they will need a longer square spindle to fit both chunky rim lock and our chunky door. The big fat door knob is off a goods shed in Abergavenny we were told, but despite its authenticity we felt it was one door knob too many.

Here is a picture of one of the sash locks screwed back into place. Note the GWR inscription on one of the sides.

On our way back to the car to get some primer we saw Foremarke Hall grind to a halt with another load of happy children.

We hadn't seen that frame and reporting number before. Very nice it is.

We left mid-afternoon in glorious sunshine, at last. For the first time we closed and secured the door, and all the windows of course are also water tight. We have our budget from the GWRT now, a shopping list drawn up, and should be able to make a start on the roof mid January, if we can get the scaffolder to find a slot for us.

Here is one last picture of the Usk hut, to close our very successful year 2022 with. Soon it will be dark again, but 2023 will be bright!

Picture puzzle time:

We had an interesting chat with the son of a former member of staff at Honeybourne last week, and he very kindly allowed us to scan in some of the photographs that he had. Unfortunately for many there was little additional information to give. So we'd like to put two to our readers, perhaps you can say more?

The above picture, of staff at Honeybourne Junction, we think was taken in 1943. It is semi-official, as it was glued to a smart piece of cardboard, it's not just a snapshot. 

Can anybody put a name to some of the faces?

The other one of interest is this one. The GWR signal box is entirely made of wood and looks a lot like Broadway box, which was also made of wood as it stood on made up ground.

However, if you zoom into the name plate it reads something like ***E*** North Signal Box. There's a letter 'E' in the first word.

The box is likely to be within 20 miles of Honeybourne.

Any ideas, anybody? Where is it?

Fimally, this looks like the last blog of the year, what with the Christmas festivities this weekend. So we say thank you for our loyal readers and supporters, and wish you all a merry Christmas, and a prosperous 2023. It will be an exciting year, that is sure. The PWay have a big relay project going at Didbrook, a bridge will be waterproofed, and the Usk hut will be completed. Maybe more - we will reveal next time.

On that merry note, we sign off for today, and indeed this year !

Thanks for all your interest and support.