Leaky finders

Thursday with the Usketeers.

Another Thursday, not a Wednesday. Apologies to those who clicked in vain last night (and yes, we've had comments!) but sometimes personal circumstances dictate a different day. Back to normal Wednesday posting next time (we think...).

 

Hello from Dave, and his commanding position. Be respectful of him, as he is holding a powerful hosepipe!

The job today was to find out what exactly was causing two leaks we've been having on our gutters. They are of course second hand, and that comes with the downside that they don't necessarily fit together very well.

In this case here it was the brand new stop end that was leaking. An easy fix would be a squirt of jollop, or so we thought, but it kept on leaking.

 

 

On the other, platform side, the cause of the leak was clear. We had two female joints, and the union inside was of a slightly different profile.

The result was wetness underneath, and some splashback against the stone as well.

Paul spent an hour or so on this one, basically squirting it liberally with more jollop. We'll know next time if that worked.

On the stop end side we eventually found the surprising cause - it wasn't the stop end with a different profile at all, but a crack of about 5 inches running along the gutter from the bolt hole in the middle.

We had to chew the fat over this one. We didn't have a spare gutter for this, as they are an unusual profile and the source is exhausted. A new one wouldn't fit the rest of the gutter line.

 

 

Eventually we decided to take it down and try our luck with our friends at the C&W shed on the other side of the tracks. 

Would they be willing to help the Usketeers?

 

They would, phew! Brian very kindly agreed to cut off the area with the crack in it. As the crack looked new and came from the fixing bolt hole, we concluded that the crack had started either when we drilled the bolt hole, or when/if we had tightened it up too much.

You can see the crack in this picture.

To avert the risk of a second crack we decided not to use a bolt to fix the stop end, but to use plenty of mastic to hold it in place.

On and off at the same time we were also clearing  the corner site by the yellow shed. We had cleared it once before; but it had been filled again, this time with a lot of old pallets and some second hand timbers. These all went on the Telehandler and got transported down to the PWay yard, where, we ascertained, they were very welcome.

On the way down to the PWay yard Dave stopped by the gutter job so that the pile of pallets could be used as a workbench.

At the end of the day both gutter leaks had been fixed (we hope).

There were two trains today, and at least three coach parties with school children. Sirens wailed, spies tiptoed furtively.

We could hear the screaming children from inside the hut.

Inside the building John was completing the staining and waxing of the new counter.

It really feels wonderful, and when you rub your hand along it, it's very silky.

We've acquired another office item for the coal merchant, a Bakelite dial up telephone, thanks to Dave, who used to work for BT. We're still on the lookout for other office items, like blotters, ink wells, an in tray, clips for holding paperwork, and some chunky old fashioned coat hooks for the wall. (We're currently using a rusty nail)

There was a moment when the counter top was free of the usual debris that we leave on it, so we took the opportunity for a quick photograph to show you how beautiful it is.

 

Outside behind the grassed area the drainage gang had arrived with the definitive top for the catch pit that they raised last week.

This took all three of them to lift into place, and it's a fine quality product, purchased by the railway at considerable expense for this deep pit below.

We now need some topsoil and a scattering of grass seed to finish this area off. The ground level is still a tad low.

In the distance over Sudeley Castle we became aware of a noise, and caught this A400 that roared right over the top of us at minimum height.

The roar was quite spine chilling!

That was the end of the day for us. With a bit of time still to spare we went to Toddington for a couple of odd jobs.

One was to record the entrance and station building as it looks today. Look out for an article 'From the Archives' in the next Cornishman, where we compare the scene with that from 1959. Did you know that the original entrance to the station site (with its fat square cast iron posts and wooden gates) was actually half way down the building? And what is wrong with the chimneys in this picture?

Make sure you subscribe to The Cornishman...

Then it was a quick visit to the canopy gang site under the 'greenhouse'

More steel has been brought in from the Macaw, before that vehicle is sent back up the north carriage siding where it will be out of reach.

This is a pile of angle. In the distance are the fascia boards, ready for removal of the millscale.

Just outside the 'greenhouse' is the pile of RSJs that will become the uprights for the P2 building, hidden inside the cavity wall.

Funding has now been released for the gusset plates for these, as well as for other elements of the canopy structure.

And here are the purlins that we have made, quite a bunch of them. If we get the opportunity it would be an idea to protect the primer with an undercoat, given that wet weather is now before us.

 

Lamp tops for Broadway

Friday at Broadway

With the help of the Friends of Broadway Station we have bought 6 new copper Windsor shaped 16 inch lamp tops for platform 2 at Broadway. The impetus for that came when the first half of the platform there was surfaced, and it was felt worthwhile putting up the final part of the lamp posts, planted there about 8 years ago now. There are 6 more such tops required for the other half of the platform, but funding for those has been deferred until the P2 building is up, and that part of the platform is no longer a building site.

It was a bright sunny day on Friday, and Neal and John can be seen carrying the tops down the platform.

On the right are the empty lamp posts, not for long now.

Here are the bodies and canopies spread out along the six posts.

We bought the tops from a coppersmith, changed the plain bolts for SS ones so that there's no rust in the future, and then had 'BROADWAY' stickers made for the glass.

 

 

 

 

We're not absolutely sure how the original names were embedded in the glass, but possibly a combination of enamel and etching. On top of that, we do not know of any companies that would do it for us, so we repeated what we did on P1, a sticker, which looks just right.

Here is a picture of the original in 1904. You can see that it had a gas burner in it, which would have come from the acetylene shed in the goods yard across the road. We have nearly the same, but with a lightbulb on the end.

 

 

 

Here's the first one going on. The glass is packed separately, four heavy packs in bubble wrap!

We had to lay it all out on the ground - plain glass, glass with a sticker, and door glass, which is slightly smaller. Unlike the (probably Chinese supplied) lamp tops on P1, these have a proper door on the side as they should.

Here they are in situ.

So much for heritage on P2.

On P1 however a shiny plastic plate has been attached to the quad royal poster board that we made to the GWR design.

To make sure that it was as authentic as possible for our museum railway, we went all the way to Wallsall to a specialist company to replicate the mouldings that go round these boards.

Under it is one of those now ubiquitous snap frames. We painted that black, in an attempt to disguise its bright aluminium impact. 

Also affected by the plastic are the 1950s era notices that are on this board, specially prepared by Alex.

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

Better news outside the cafe - two pairs of tables & chairs have been put outside. What a great idea! It makes the cafe look more welcoming, and the new tables are in use too, as you can see.

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday at Stanway House.

An afternoon of classic cars, tea and cake. A lovely event, and in the gardens of such a wonderful house too. And the fountain was on. Our visitors from Holland had never seen the like before, and all without pumps!

 

Stanway House, with a Bentley.

 

The famous 'Blower Bentley', with the blower mounted out in front.

 

And, last but not least, a member of the Broadway gang chugged past in his own veteran automobile.

 

 

 

 

Thursday with the Usketeers.

Once again a day later, due to personal commitments. Just as well, as the tail end of Hurricane Lee passed through Winchcombe on Wednesday morning.

 

It's beginning to be quite fresh in the morning now, leading to these more steamy pictures as the ECS arrives at Winchcombe to pick up the token for its trip further south.

 

 

 

As it's getting fresher, we are starting to think of winter food. Cup-a-soup will be back again soon, and this week Paul bought us bacon baps from Greg's. They were great.

As we are now on a post-holiday diet to shed some tummy fat, we turned down today a slice of fruit cake, a macaroon, a doughnut and a slice of cake in the cafe at Broadway. You can see where that paunch might have come from, and it's not just from Italy!

  

 

 

 

Paul spent the day on our counter, here on completing the skirting boards around it. Two more people inquired today about buying a round of drinks from it.

Maybe we are missing a trick?

 

Later Paul moved on to joining the short piece of counter to the wall. Here you see him making the end fit the rough wall exactly.

 

 

 

 

This is the end result. Look how well the wood follows the contours of the rough stone.

Paul was pretty pleased with the result, although as no compliments were forthcominmg from his team mates, he had to say so himself.

We shall compliment Paul on line!

 

Dave and Yours Truly worked on filling the gap around the paver path, and later sowing it with grass seed.

Here is Dave back filling the gap with earth, for which he was competing with the drainage gang, who were filling a hole around a low patch at the end.

 

 

At the end of the day the area around the path looked like this.

You can just about make out the grass seed around it, as we hadn't yet raked it in. And watered it.

Will it still grow this late in the season? We will find out next week.

The other exciting bit around the hut today was at the north end of the site, where the drainage gang were dealing with the top of a deep catch pit located here. It was too far down into the ground, and it needed raising, together with the ground around it.

The gang has also sourced 4 catch pit rings in plastic. This makes them much easier to manipulate, all previous examples having been made of concrete.

Jonathan brought the rings with the Telehandler. The 4 rings should make the edge of the pit 2ft higher.

 

The existing pit, the deepest on the railway, is in good condition but too low down, and does not have a lockable cover.

 

 

Once the edge of the pit was clean, the 4 new rings were placed on top and cemented all round.

 

 

 

 

Once the mortar was in place earth from the long pile by the fence was retrieved - thereby also helping to tidy up the yard a bit - and placed around the rings.

For lunch we had a visitor...

Jonathan again, now propping up the counter, or will it be a bar?

The height was carefully calculated, using the elbows of some of the team members. It leans just right! Then came the bombshell: 'Can I have a doughnut?'. The barefaced cheek! Oh well, if you don't ask, you don't get. We gave him one.

'Look what we've got'.

Near the end of the day we went to get the safe that we have been storing for a couple of years now. We got it from the current owner of the Broadway station B&B, and it is likely that it used to be in the station ticket office, until the building was demolished in 1963. Sadly it's placing in the rebuilt ticket office was declined, so it will now go in the heritage goods office, aka the Usk hut.

For the time being we have parked it inside the door of the hut, but when John has finished staining the inside of the counter it will go in the corner underneath, visible by anyone standing by the typewriter. So now it will have a definite home with us.

At the end of the day the drainage gang had completed their job of raising the catch pit, and back filling around it. They left the site nice and tidy.

An idea for this area would be to lengthen the goods platform to include the PWay train, which is due to be stabled here. Up against a platform getting ourselves and our kit in and out of it against a platform would be so  much easier. We already have the bricks and the copers (ex Swanbourne) so funds would only be needed for the foundations.

 

 

 

A look over the fence - Barnstaple, L&B.

During an earlier visit to an Exmoor Associates update meeting, we spent a morning in Barnstaple to see what was left of the narrow gauge railway that closed in 1935.

It is already clear that the reinstated railway will never go beyond Pilton yard, where the main works were. The rest of the line, to the (former) main line station to Ilfracombe, is too built up and in any case Pilton yard and the original terminus are not that far from the town centre anyway.

So what is there to see today?

First of all, an extract from Google Maps with the original trackbed coloured in. Apologies for the wobble at the end, it's the best we could do with limited drawing skills. It'll have to do!

Map by Google Maps.

Before we look at some on site pictures, a few words of explanation. The line entered Barnstaple along the river Yeo, crossing it by the green patch top right, where a short stretch is actually owned by EA - Raleigh Weir. It then ran along the back gardens of Yeo Vale Road to the triangular Pilton Yard, the likely future terminus. From there it crossed the main road and then ran along Rolle Quay, before bending round to the River Taw, where it met the standard gauge Barnstaple Town station on the line to Ilfracombe. That can be seen as a thin green line, now being a cycle path. Barnstaple town station is closed, as is another to the east of the town, Barnstaple Victoria Road. A third station, Barnstaple Junction, remains open south of the river, and today forms the end of the Tarka railway line (continuing as the Tarka Trail cycle path)

 

To start with then, this is the northern (sharp) end of Pilton yard, looking uphill.

A road leads along the back ends of the gardens of Yeo Vale Road and at first we thought that it was the old trackbed, but looking at the maps again it is probably not. The old trackbed most likely ran just to the right of the concrete fence in the centre, inside the car park today.

 

This is a close up of the northern end, and although the track looks like the old railway trackbed, we think it is actually to the right of the fence. There it is squashed by a newer fence, which itself runs alongside Alexandra road, visible on the map in a curve. This looks like a deviation round the town centre of the A39, so it's the verges of that which would need to accommodate the reinstatement of the line to Pilton Yard.

 

 

 

Out of curiosity we went down the track at the back of the terrace to see where it went.

It ends about half way along the curve made by the new A39 Alexandra road. We could be wrong, but our guess is that this isn't the old trackbed.

 

Back the other way then, looking south into Pilton yard, now a public car park.

 

The old building on the right looks suspiciously like a remainder of the L&B works. To the left of them, in the car park, was the goods shed, then further left of that, two railway sheds.

Here's a general view of Pilton yard, looking towards Barnstaple. The photographer stood on the old trackbed, with the track alongside Yeo Vale Road gardens on the other side of the concrete fence on the right.

The running line exited Pilton Yards through a narrow opening on the far left.

This is that narrow opening. It's still pretty intact.

But instead of leading to a small gated L/C over the A39 leading out of town, it now points to a new roundabout, with the A39 ring road (Alexandra Road) coming in from the left, and leaving by the right. Straight ahead is a wide new avenue that follows the line of the old trackbed to the river Taw along the trees in the background. 

This is one of the reasons why the last half mile to the railway station is unlikely to be rebuilt.

We also had a look a little further to the right. This is the bottom end of the River Yeo, just before it enters the Taw. Sailing ships came up to this point to exchange goods with the railway.

Standing on the new bridge visible in the picture above, you can see Rolle's Quay where the sailing ships used to moor. 

The narrow gauge railway ran down along the other side, left of camera.

The L&B trackbed here has been absorbed by another new road (North Walk), albeit a much more peaceful one than Alexandra road carrying the A39 traffic. It follows the curve of the railway as it swung round to parallel the Taw into the main line station.

Having turned through 90 degrees to approach the standard gauge station, we can turn back and see the cycle path of the line to Ilfracombe. The Taw is on the left. The mouth of the Yeo is the little irregularity to the left of the pedestrian, and the branch line crossed it via a swing bridge.

Now we can turn through 180 degrees and look east along the river. Those 4 gable ends in the distance are a problem for any reinstatement here, as they are new and built over the SG trackbed.

 

Stepping closer to those 4 gable ends - a large block of flats, where 'block' is the operative word - we can also see now a more distant gable end to the left of them. That is the SG station building, still existing.

Skip round the big block of flats, and you get a nice view of the old SG station building. It's pretty much intact, except that the canopy has been mostly glazed in. The building now serves as some sort of day care centre.

This is the other end of it, with more original canopy visible. To the right is a small square building...

... and that is the original signal box !

We're standing on the original, single track SG trackbed here. It's clearly squashed by another large, new building.

Walk round that curved red wall in the picture above, and you get to see the front of the original SG station. This side is pretty much intact, it even has an SR green enamel board with BARNSTAPLE TOWN STATION on it.

The L&B shared the station facilities, and did not have its own buildings here.

Just to the right is the mound of the old castle, and the town centre, with a nice covered market.

Next week, publication day is Thursday again, personal circumstances dictating. Sausage baps are already on order for that day!