Back to work, and friends.

Christmas Eve.

No, not under the tree, in the cold at CRC! Ok, it wasn't that cold, and sitting at home was becoming a bit dreary, so we heeded the call for a quick job on the loop turnout at CRC south.

 

 

At Winchcombe the yard shunter was waiting with a load of replacement concrete sleepers to go to Didbrook.

We need to do this several times more.

 

 

In principle it was a quick job, so there was a call out for anyone with a free Christmas Eve to help.

Three of us started at Winchcombe with a white Transit, the two Landies having both been sold.

Our tool van is in C&W to get new doors and a repaint, so we had to fetch our tools from different locations. You never know what you might need when you get there.

We drove over Cleeve Hill, which was pretty today, and pleasantly free of traffic.

At CRC by the box were were awaited by another 3 volunteers, those which lived nearer that area. So there were 6 of us in all, not at all bad for a quick, unexpected call out.

 

We loaded the gear up on a trolley and pushed it to the trouble spot, which was the southern loop turnout on the other side of the road bridge.

Bert Ferrule gives the case a hard Paddington stare. There's a short in the track circuit here, but why?

We took the insulated fishplates off, believing the end post to be the problem (it usually is) but in this case it didn't look too bad. 

Hmmmmm...

The two cast iron chairs by the upper blue jean leg are touching! And the chairbolt of one is touching the fishplate.

Fishy, that.

 

We decided to remove the old insulated jackets, both plates and the bolts, and gave the joint a new set just in case.

One old jacket was then cut to size to serve as an improvised insulator between the two chairs that were touching.

How many volunteers does it take to fit a fishplate? One for each bolt...

Some timbers, second hand 22 years ago, could now do with replacement.

Returning back to the Transit at the end of the day, under the skewed road bridge.

A test of the cuircuit from CRC signal box proved that the short had gone - problem solved!

Didbrook in 1984.

Our big non-running season PWay project this spring is the replacement of a section of sleepers at Didbrook. This was laid in 1984 in panels, with concrete sleepers. What could be wrong with that? Ah, but they were economy sleepers. Shorter than normal sleepers, and with two weight saving oval holes in the middle.

Thanks to the photographic record of former PWay worker John Lees, we can take a look at what was done in 1984, when the track was first put back. Just 5 years after it was taken up by BR.

 

This is what they look like. As they are shorter, there is less surface area to spread the axle loading, and a number are showing signs of breaking in half in the middle, where there is, by design, less material. They are also thinner, and with two holes in the middle. You can see them centre left.

Their origins is the Dowmac private sidings at Quedgley. They were the subject of a track recovery operation earlier in 1984, and the offer of bullhead track with concrete sleepers, ready to lay in panels, was a very attractive one.

Didbrook 2 bridge, almost new, in the foreground.

 

 

Here is the laying gang, coming round the curve at Didbrook after leaving the straight that is Toddington station.

A famous sceptic once muttered: 

'We'll never get past Didbrook 1', 

but here they are, past Didbrook 1 (a brick built bridge) and approaching Didbrook 2 ( a concrete bridge, one of the few that has been replaced on the Honeybourne line).

Don't doubt the enthusiasm of the GWSR volunteers!

 

 

 

The track panels were loaded on to a bogie flat and pushed out to the rail head.

Here they were laid out on to the trackbed. It looks quite new still, and has been levelled by the railway's JCB and some excess ballast shifted to one side for later re-use.

Progress must have looked spectacular, as you moved forwards 20 yards in seconds. A big difference from the sponsored 24 hour track lay efforts, which went on all night assembling loose sleepers and rails.

The young railway had the use of this NCK crawler crane, often operated by Ivor Dixon, although not in these scenes. Ivor was a tank transporter driver in the army, so was well versed with heavy equipment.

The NCK was a British crane, using an American patent, and was built after the war. Sadly, the company no longer exists, but you can still get spares, and they had a good reputation of long life and reliability.

Here they are just passing the cottages by the road leading to Didbrook 2 bridge. You can clearly see the ballast scraped to one side. The railway couldn't afford new ballast of course, so that went back in once the panels were down.

It was a hot summer in 1984. Two PWayers have bare tops, and one is down to just shorts. They're adding the fishplates to the latest panel, here laid on Didbrook 2 bridge.

 

With the panel down and plated up, the supply train can move up to the next bit. More bare chests in evidence...

The shunter pushing the extension train - then still without a dedicated mess coach - was a Fowler 0-4-0 diesel. There was a tool van though, and a Mk1 BSO still in BR blue and grey. This, despite the fact that it faced the platform at Toddington, as in the very early days only one side of the coaches was painted chocolate and cream. Perhaps the MK1 served as a mess coach, although with the proximity to Toddington still, it would have been easy to walk back home, where there was a permanent mess coach available.

The next picture was taken on the approaches to Hayles Abbey halt. You can just make out the roofs of the two cottages there. At this point the sleepers change over from lightweight concrete to wood, so that is as far as the panels went, and what we need to change this spring.

Note the primitive screw jacks used for lifting the track. The Duff jacks we use now are so much more efficient.

The people in the middle were two of the leading lights of the railway at the time - Dave Heathcote in red was head of the PWay, while the chap in orange scratching his head was Tim Bazeley, chairman at the time.

They're giving the latest panel a cursory packing. The chap standing on the left has got a shovel too, and is wearing a tie, which is tucked into his shirt. A wise move.

That was the end of the lightweight sleeper panels, and for a while, the limit of services from Toddington.

At least they now stopped somewhere out of sight, making the nascent railway feel longer.

The next two pictures were taken a year later.

It's now 1985, and the track is partially ballasted, enough for services to run. The locomotive was the lovely maroon 0-4-0 Cadbury No.1. The first coach is a chocolate and cream Mk1 buffet, while the second looks to be a TSO in BR blue still. At this point they are reversing back to the platform at Toddington. There would be no run round possibilities until the track reached Winchcombe.

Cadbury No.1 with its lovely gold logo was not kind to our track - it had a surprisingly high axle loading and a short wheelbase. But it got us going in that important first year. Currently it is languishing quietly at Tyseley, with a tree growing out of it. Not at all ideal, but we have no room for it in our shed, and putting it on a plinth at Toddington is hardly an improvement to rusting by the turntable at Tyseley.

 

Those pictures last time:

We already had the suspicion that the name plate on the box was

EVESHAM NORTH SIGNAL BOX

but we couldn't find a picture of it anywhere to prove it. 

Now a comment by Aardvark makes it almost definitely so. 

We shall ask the owner of the snaps for permission to post them on the Flickr site. (address top right of the blog)

We also mentioned a second picture by the water crane at Honeybourne in 1943. Here it is.

It looks to have been taken at pretty much the same time, but this one is more informal. We also know the names of the people on it:

Ted Keyte

Jim Hope

Jim Hughes

( not in that order, Jim Hughes is probably on the left)

Keyte is very much a local name in this part of the Evesham Vale.

Bits of heritage over the last few days:

Christmas is a quiet period - too quiet at times. We took a couple of things home to fill the space between presents, and the arrival of the family, with the grandkids taran - tarraing through the house:

 

 

 

 

Nine ogee brackets for the Usk hut have been stripped of old paint and rust, treated with rust killer, and painted with black Hammerite. 

An extra milk churn for Broadway was spotted, and a transfer agreed with the owner. It's in reasonable condition, whereas those currently at Broadway are badly rusted, and many are missing their characteristic lids. We will swap one for one.

There is some writing on it - J Hanson & Sons, Liverpool. This was a dairy there that had its own milk bottles, so quite big. Down the side are indentations for partial contents - 4,6,8 and 10 gallons.

Tuesday was spent with Neal in the loco shed at Toddington. We're still working on those 3 end posts for the P2 canopy-step link, making them look as if they are cast, like those on P1. Those were a success.

 

Here's Neal working on top of the boxes that surround the bottoms of the posts, where they go in the ground.

Behind him is 3850, advancing a bit every time we see it.

 

On P2 at Broadway the post arrangements are much nearer to the original, as the steps are not out of alignment with the proposed building. 

That means that the stringers will be attached to the posts, as they should be, and for this we need to leave a channel in the decoration. On P1 we had to put the posts outside the stringers, and use some gate posts on the stringer ends, to make that look like something intentional.

Tuesday was the first non-running day, so things were winding down in the loco shed. At least in terms of running steam engines.

P&O was being cleaned out in front of the shed, while inside 4270 simmered quietly.

The last steam escapes from the safety valves of 4270.

Take a good look, as this is the last time you will see that big old tank engine in steam for quite a few years. It's going in the restoration queue, we heard today. That of its owner, not the GWSR. We don't own any steam engines.

This is as far as we got on Tuesday. The boxes are almost complete. The stringer ends will go in the channels left in the wrap round boxes. The one on the right has one more bit to go on, also the half round decoration needs to go round the top. Lastly, plates need to be attached to the heads and bases.

 

 

 

Wednesday with the Usketeers.

What news after the Christmas break?

Well, the scaffolder is coming next week, we've just got to fix the day. At the same time we are progressing the floor, and spent a useful half hour at a local reclamation yard, where we found a pallet of serviceable natural stone slabs that we could buy. Not cheap though. But we're not laying Marley tiles in our 1850 stone hut, it's got to look right.

Trains have stopped now - this would be a strange 'Santa' train otherwise. The yard shunter was very busy all day long, rearranging the rakes and sorting out coaches for servicing.

The car park was crowded again, as the Santa marquees are still here and parking spaces for volunteers were at a premium. All the Christmas paraphenalia was being put back into containers for next year.

It was a bit drizzly first thing, so we had a second go at visiting the Winchcombe reclamation yard, this time with some success. Our eyes immediately fell on piles of ideal 3 inch thick slabs, but the site man told us that all of them had already been sold. Looking elsewhere around the yard we found piles of similar, but thinner slabs. These were 30mm thick, still acceptable, and rather cheaper, although in cash terms, still a lot of money for our little budget. We decided to go for them as they are local (no transport costs) and all of a kind, so the floor will look uniform. They are being sold by the pallet, so we went for one pallet, which as it happens gives you 13m2, just about what we need. We have one or two unbroken originals in reserve.

Guttering along the big window side.

 

As the day progressed the early drizzle receded, and we ventured outside to look at the guttering we retrieved before Christmas.

We laid it out along the sides where it would go, to see if we had enough and how it would fit.

 

Guttering along the little window side.

It soon became clear that we had just about enough, with only one broken bit left over.

What we haven't got are any 3 inch downpipes, and we are also short of two stop ends. Some swan necks to link gutters to downpipes are also needed. They can be bought, but we will need to find out how, unless someone has some spare?

With some cautious sunshine after lunch, we retrieved two trestles for the outside, to serve as work benches on which we could rest the gutters for cleaning.

Dave wire brushing the first of the 6 or so gutters that we will use.

Dave did one, and yours truly another, which was also painted in black Hammerite at the end of the day. That paint covers really well, and the refurbished gutter looked great.

We also made sure that all the items were separate for cleaning purposes, so Paul spent some time tapping away at a reluctant fixing bolt. A nervous business, that, we don't want to crack the casting.

Careful with that hammer, Paul!

Happy days eating cake, in a bit of thin sunshine.

The PWay department was split into two parties today.

One underwent further training in the RRV, and they spent the day lifting dumpy bags this way and that.

The other, larger party repaired to Prescott rail-over-road bridge. This will receive maintenance to its deck this winter, and for that the track has to come off.

At the same time some roadworks will be undertaken underneath, so the road will be closed for a period, the works being carried out in usison to minimise any disruption. Sounds like good planning.

Over Christmas Dave had also taken sonme homework home. This was to investigate how the big rimlock could be reversed. We are quite keen to use it, as it is huge and just right for our door. Could have been made for - it is 9 inches wide!

What would it look like?

The conclusion was that the lock could not be changed, but it could still be used if fitted upside down. That means the keyhole will be at the top and upside down, but we don't consider that a particular drawback, as we don't have the key anyway, and for security we will be using a railway padlock on the bolt already fitted.

The latch was quite interesting, and Dave had discovered a little historical clue on the tongue of the lock itself.

We got the lock from a local supporter, and now we know where he had got it from (he will say a skip, which is where he gets a lot of his antiquities from).

Have a look at the letters here:

Yes, it's an old railway lock. Not 'GWR', but LNWR ! So it wasn't just the GWR that stamped everything with their initials.

During one of the shunter's many movements up and down the yard we saw that the PWay train was being readied. This is going to be taken to our work site at Didbrook, so that we will have some shelter and messing facilities, as well as our tools of the trade.

We also got ourselves ready for the scaffolder, who is coming at a yet to be determined day next week. We spoke to him, and agreed that much. We moved all the bricks for the rest of the chimney away from the building to give him room. There will be a 6ft high level all round the building, and a lift to 12ft around the chimney.

You'll see next week. We hope, so fingers crossed!

 

 

And finally:

 

A picture, courtesy of Paul, of the start of track removal at the Prescott Road bridge.

You can see, unusually for our blog, a shot from a drone (or was it that noisy Osprey we saw over Winchcombe this morning?) of our Cotswolds line. You can see how it was once double track, pretty straight for high speed running, and how it ran along the bottom of the Cotswolds edge.

All the rainwater from the right needs to cross our embankments and cuttings, to get to the bottom of the vale on the left.

Thank heavens for the drainage gang!