A slap up meal.

Thursday by the goods shed.

A day in the sun (but with an icy wind) at Toddington, digging a trench to take the power supply for the yard lamp we are putting up.

7820 Dinmore Manor at rest on shed.

If you are lucky and the sun is with you, then you can take portrait pictures like this one, in front of the heritage water tower and an earlier yard lamp that was erected. 

The one we are placing by the pit outside the goods shed will be very similar, with a ladder and platform made by John to replace what was missing.

 

It was easy digging a trench, as most of the ground is made up of old ash. Then we got to a stretch of concrete!

Neal cut two parallel lines, and John then removed the bits in between with a sledgehammer.

The conduit we are using is on the left. As it was lying about the site we are recycling it, so no cost issues there.

By lunch time we had broken through the concrete and were on the home stretch, in ash again, near the corner of the goods shed, where the cable will enter the building.

At the end of the day we had finished the trench, put the conduit in and with a new, stronger draw string, and back filled the whole thing again, not forgetting to cover the conduit with yellow warning tape,

Working here of course we get a grandstand view of the trains.

Here is P&O taking the marroon set out of Toddington.

At the end of the day it was the Growler that came past, releasing P&O at the far end to go back on shed.

A few more scenes from PWay work over the last few days:

Sleepers were replaced a week ago in very bad weather, with heavy rain throughout the day.

Here they are at Mp13, a pretty exposed part of the railway a bit south of the Gretton tunnel mouth. Not an inch of shelter here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Later the gang was at Three Arch bridge, and at least that allowed them to eat their sandwiches in the dry, but then work resumed...

The picture on the right shows the sort of thing we are dealing with - a life expired wooden sleeper, which would have been second hand when it was first used by us in about 1990.

A brighter day was Monday this week, when just two gang members came to re-stack some of the economy sleepers near Hayles Abbey halt.

In an effort to clear the relay site as fast as possible they were left a little too haphazzardly along the haul road.

This is what some of them looked like. Walt in the Telehandler scooped them up, aided by a colleague, although not in this picture. You can see him resting in the distance...

 

This is what a stack is supposed to look like. Nice and neat, and ready for loading on to a bogie flat.

We are now waiting for one to be brought up to clear this area.

Wednesday saw the gang on sleeper replacement at Toddington - just the one picture from that.

We'll leave you to figure out which one...

Wednesday with the Usketeers.

Ah, we do look after ourselves. For a long time we had promised ourselves a celebratory breakfast, in honour of finishing the roof. Today was that day. But the breakfast - that great British All Day Breakfast - actually took place mid-morning, and after it no-one wanted any lunch any more. Nor doughnuts, cake of hot cross buns offered. We were full.

But first some work on site. We gave it two hours.

Yours truly dug a hole. A deep hole, the idea was to get down to near the bottom of the platform, then drill across to the other side.

Jules set out too deep clean all the windows. These were covered with putty and fingerprints from fitting the glass with putty.

The windows looked fantastic afterwards, well done that man. The sun shone in.

While the PWay gang were loading up sleepers for replacement in the distance, we relaxed in our little self built hut. That's the way to do it.

Then we set off for a nearby pub for a slap up breakfast. This plateful cost £8, which is really not bad. We are a modest band of men.

Paul and John are looking a little glum here. It could be the way the camera caught them, or maybe they were glum as they had to wait until Dave and Jules got their plates in front of them.

Some people don't do waiting very well...

 

 

 

 

 

After 'Breakfast' we went back to Winchcombe, and it was lunch time. Nobody was interested in eating though.

Might as well get on with work then.

While we were away there was a delivery of patio slabs. A row of these is to be laid alongside the platform, but not by us.

Jules moved on to the next window, and you can see how clean it is, even at this distance.

Inside the hut, Dave, John and Paul finished off filling the gaps between the slabs with mortar, using that gun they had last time. That really works well. Paul smoothed the mortar down with a wet sponge, and by close of play the floor was done.

With the hole by the platform now deep enough we could move on to drilling a hole through the wall for the supply cable.

Here Paul and Dave are fitting a very long bit (about 3ft long in fact) to an SDS drill. That will get us through the wall.

Next we see Paul on his hands and knees drilling from the outside back in. That took quite a long time - getting through about 30 inches of brick and concrete block wall - but we got there in the end.

Outside the door of the hut yours truly started on digging a trench for the cable to run to the back of the wall. It needs to be deeper than this, but it's a start.

Southwest by rail (3)

The third and final episode of the PWay jolly to the southwest.

Overlooked last week was this group photograph of us all at Buckfastleigh. We're very happy, as it has finally stopped raining!

Once back at Totnes we took a main line train back to Exeter, and went past Dawlish for the fourth time. It seems all roads lead to Dawlish round here. 

We hadn't finished though, as calculations proved that on arrival at Exeter late afternoon it was also possible to do a return trip up the recently reopened line to Okehampton.

The Okehampton trains are handled by 150 units, which start from Exeter Central, come down the hill to St Davids, and then go up the line to Barnstaple.

Here is ours arriving. Straight on is the main line to Plymouth.

We found the layout a bit confusing, so here is a map showing which way the different lines go. When looking at the picture with the 150 above, you need to hold it upside down... is that clear?

Arrival of 150 232 at Okehampton, looking back.

 

 

We piled into the DMU and soon set off for Okehampton. That's up the line to Barnstaple and then, from Crediton, further up the same line but now on the western of two reversible lines running in parallel. After a while they diverge, and you are on your own, going steadily uphill through a belt of trees. 

It was still stormy, with rain.

There were no reopened stations on the way (no great centres of population encountered) so it was non stop to Okehampton.

Only one platform is used. The station is in beautiful condition, and all painted in Southern colours.

Further along the line you can see the original doubkle track leading away to Meldon quarry, Meldon viaduct, and in a long curve around Dartmoor, back to Plymouth via Tavistock. That is the Dawlish diversionary route that could be recreated.

Ready for the return to Exeter.

 

 

Okehampton station is not staffed, but there is a separate cafe, Dartmoor visitor centre, a shop, museum, Youth Hostel and toilets.

At the evening time that we were there it was all closed, and there was no time to hang around, just time for a couple of snapshots.

Soon we were off again. This shot out of the window of the accelerating train shows how neatly kept this Southern station is, but who can recognise the interloper from another railway company? What item does not belong here? (but might fit in at Broadway?)

 

After 3 or 4 miles bowling along between the trees - they grew very close to the track, having only been cut back to the edge of the embankments - there was a sudden clatter and a rapid deceleration.

The driver and guard met for a hasty talk, then revealed that we had hit a tree branch across the line. What now? For our young driver it was unprecedented.

 

We glanced nervously out of the window, where a skeleton lay on the trackbed. Had this happened before? Did everyone get home OK?

The DMU lurched forward a yard, then stopped again. Our driver plucked up courage, got down onto the trackbed and removed the tree branch. The lurch was a test to see if the DMU would still take power - it did.

After three quarters of an hour we set off again without further incident. At Exeter we took a look at the front of the unit and found two grapefruit sized indentations in the corner of the chasis. A blow then, but not that serious.

 

The next morning saw us back at Exeter St. Davids, waiting for a train to Liskeard. This would take us past.... Dawlish again. For the fifth time.

 There are still some HSTs around, like this one here of the castle class. It's 43154 Compton Castle.

 

 

While waiting we came across this strange trolley.

HSTs well known for losing coolant all the time?

Do they have such trolleys for other classes of diesel locomotive?

 

 

This time we would go beyond Plymouth on the GWR main line, and across the Royal Albert bridge.

You can see it out of the window here.

The difficulty Brunel must have had with building this line through all the estuaries and deep river valleys became very clear now, as we passed over numerous towering viaducts, and deep green chasms below.

Liskeard was our destination then, the junction for the Looe line.

We expected some sort of junction indeed, but not this: A T bone meeting of the lines, as the Looe line butted on to the main line at 90 degrees.

A sweep of track around the car park afforded a little used connection for the exchange of stock.

Again another pretty little original station in good condition, with a small museum too. It was closed, but we caught the gist of it by reading through the windows.

 

 

Another 150 set greeted us. These are venerable machines, a good 40 years old now. It just goes to show how well rail vehicles last, and how green their replacement (or not) actually is. Cars seem to last barely 10 years these days.

 

We set off down a steep horseshoe curve.

It first heads north, and as you drop away from Liskeard station you catch a glimpse of the viaduct that precedes it, an example of the difficulties faced by Brunel.

The line then loops right round, and, having started at the far end of this viaduct and at the same height, we now passed underneath it on the opposite side of the valley.

 

 

 

What is striking here is that these are stone built viaducts, with somewhat wobbly looking brick extensions built on top.

These brick extensions replace the wooden arches previously in place, and built by Brunel.

Today's spans are in steel and flat, hence higher pillars required.

 

The original Looe-Liskeard railway stopped at the bottom of the hill on which Liskeard station is situated. That was very inconvenient for passengers. At the beginning of the last century the GWR built an extension which linked up with the main line, but hit it edge on. Now the train has to reverse at the beginning of the extension at the bottom.

The line then follows the bed of a canal all the way down the valley to the port of Looe.

Inspired by the SDR driver we found a baker specialising in Cornish pasties.

He also had speciality bread (one loaf please...) and excellent coffee. Our pudding - a custard slice - proved too much, and we had to take it home to share with Mrs. Blogger.

Then we had to hurtle back to the station a 10 minute walk away (with our luggage, we had already checked out of the hotel!) to catch the shuttle back to the top of the hill.

150 219 took us back to Liskeard, where we caught the main line train back to Exeter, and eventually to Cheltenham. That was the end of our little PWay jolly - where might we go next year?