Earth movements II

Saturday at Winchcombe.

A PWay day, but only 4 volunteers on site. We are gearing up for the track removal on the viaduct, and there is not much for us to do along the line in the run up.

Our regular doughnut supplier was away on Saturday, so we had a backup supply, with a little more luxury on top. That was an excellent combination with the tea.

Mike, Jim and Simon check our new supply of lifters.

The intention was to go to MP8 and do some ballast shovelling, but there were not enough of us, given that we needed lookouts too.

So it was decided to spend the day checking inventory, and going through stuff in the GUV that we might not need. 

We came across 10 tins of British Army grease filled in 1993, to be checked in 1995. Might come in useful, but is it still in date?

The previous day a team had also been out (during the storm too, with heavy rain forecast) and they did a good job moving and re-stacking second hand rail.

Picture with thanks to Walt.

STEVIE once again proved his usefulness, as there was no way we could move one tonne rails around the yard without a heavy lifter.

The results were some beautiful stacks - here of flatbottom rail in the foreground, and bullhead at the rear.

 

And this is a stack of manganese rail. At the moment there are ten full lengths, which we would like to dispose of, preferrably not for scrap. They are in good condition.

This is the location of a previous 'sundry' pile, which has now been sorted and restacked where it belongs.

It is in this area where we propose to stable the mess coach, so a free area needs to be available to accommodate the steps.

Potentially we could also lengthen the Usk platform to this point. We have most of the materials already.

 

 

 

With our day of sorting out, we decided to go through the scrap pile and see how many throughbolt chairs there were. These go to the 2807 group @ £5 each, and they turn them into profitable bootscapers.

We found 14 throughbolters, and loaded them up on the blue Transit. Then we took them to Toddington, and dropped them by the 2807 boot scraper raw material pile.

Nobody there, hope they appreciated the gesture.

Back at Winchcombe we stood ready to take a photograph of P&O with plenty of steam due to the cold, and were surprised to see who was really leading the train.

It was 2807 making a double header. No doubt out for a test run, given the faces we saw on the footplate.

It was good to see this heavy freight engine again, and it was in fine form too, looking very steam tight all round.

Our last view on Saturday was of the C&W 03 coming through the Winchcombe platforms. You'll notice a TOAD waiting in P2. This was part of manoeuverings to assemble a freight train for next weekend's gala. Don't miss it!

That freight train is always very popular.

Tuesday on steels.

Half a day, due to a dental appointment. Neal and John have been cutting and drilling, and the half day was spent cleaning and then undercoating two more purlins, on one side. The weather was just perfect for it, after much rain these last days.

Five of the purlins (just visible on the right) have been undercoated so far, and four are left to do.

After brushing the swarf from the drilling away on two of them, then cleaning them carefully with turps and a cloth, here is a start made with the undercoat, on the first side.

 

Then three pictures of Neal, always busy.

In the first picture he is drilling holes in the other end of the ring beams, as promised last time.

Next he moved to the middle, where he drilled just a few holes. These are precautionary, in case we wish to place any small struts across the ring, as was done on the P1 building.

Neal thinks they won't be necessary as this ring beam is much stronger, but it's no trouble to do them now, just in case.

Finally he showed us how two back to back angles will run up these plates here, which will constitute the middle of each truss. Originally these were made of large section T bar, but this is no longer available, so back to back angle will be used, which is even stronger. It will be rivetted on in due course. John is preparing them in the loco shed, out of sight. (but not out of mind)

Lastly for Tuesday we took a picture of some coins discovered cast into the floor of the old garden centre.

After intense study, we concluded that these were cheap modern copper pennies, but interesting nonetheless. Probably placed there as a good luck charm.

Wednesday with the Usketeers.

Four of us again, Dave being back from family business in the south. The conversation got a lot livelier too! Such fun. Of course we had bacon rolls, with ketchup.

 

This seemed to make Paul rather sleepy.

And what do you think of our 'bar stool' here? Did we heed your thoughts about having beer pumps along the counter? Many people have asked about them; in jest, we thought.  

Actually it's a support that Paul made for the safe. There's a bit of T&G to go round it yet. We don't want the safe down on the floor, where no one will see it.

 

Paul spent the day on carpentry, which is one of his strengths. The rest of us were on heavy labour, which is about our level.

 

Here are Dave and John digging away at an unwanted pile of dirt down the side of the yard. As it's been rather wet they've laid down a plank along which they can wheel the barrow, out of the mud.

Yours Truly spent several hours clearing up part of the site where the PWay mess coach is due to stand. The manganese rails have now been shifted, revealing some unwanted storage of items that are not PWay, or that should be broken up. We took these to storage elsewhere, or put them on the broken concrete pile.

During the day we were visited by the chop-chop-chop of a big Chinook. That's always an occasion. You can hear it coming, even if out of sight and somewhere over Sudely Castle.

We found Paul outside the hut with his usual leer, sawing at the legs of the new support.

Now a little divertissement:

Here's P&O pulling away from the bracket signal. Conditions are rather damp so there is a short slip, then more confidence and a whistle, before exchanging tokens from the signalman.

https://youtu.be/052zImilmbM

 

 

 

 

One of the items to be cleared up was this half sleeper with a throughbolter attached. The throughbolter was in good condition, so worth saving without bashing it about and damaging it.

This is an ideal situation for the new maul that was sponsored by a blog reader. We went to get it, as well as a big keying hammer with which to persuade it deeper into the grain.

We asked Dave to take a break and help us, as driving the Maul in is a two man job. One man holds it into the crack, the other whacks it with the keying hammer.

It worked perfectly! The chair has now been put aside for 2807 and their bootscraper industry at Toddington.

That looks heavy....

The heaviest item we moved was this concrete base used by S&T. Such bases usually support rodding runs or signal wires. This one was still in reasonable condition, so we took it round to the S&T compound. The other larger one is broken however, and is still on site as it needs mechanical means to move it to the scrap concrete pile.

Towards the latter half of the day we raked over the dirt that John and Dave had brought. The slope comes down from the Usk hut, to peter out at the foot of the tree.

The blue effect is a beam of light, and marks where we still need to put the spent ballast that we were prevented from collecting by a neighbour the other day.

Finally, here's a overview of the future mess coach site. Walt cleared away some rotten sleepers, we picked up rubbish that was found underneath and put it in the bins. The big concrete S&T block remains on site for disposal on our concrete scrap pile, and in the foreground is the remains of the sleeper that we split with the maul.

This weekend is our end of year gala, so we do hope you will come and see us.

A day with a Network Rail gang.

Today we were joined by Alistair, Mike, Bethany, Jake and Richard from Network Rail, who came and volunteered with the PWay gang changing sleepers at the south end of Toddington. They got stuck in and seemed to really enjoy their day. After lunch, when asked if they'd like to go for a train ride, they said that they would prefer to continue with the track works, so we weren't going to stop them! 

We are grateful for their help and anyone else who would like to come and volunteer with us is most welcome!

Replacement sleepers laid out by Paul in readyness.

Explaining the job - 'This is a shovel'.

So this is a steam engine...?

GWSR PWay - 3 heaving, 10 watching.

Today's PWay team at Toddington South. Surely some mistake here, there are 9 men, but the figure clearly says '10' ! Ah, forgot the photographer.....

And finally, in case of any doubt, we welcome any new volunteers, and to our delight we actually feature on the back of the gala brochure! So it's true....

(Last spring's relay at Didbrook, in case you ask)

A bit of undiscovered history.

Greg Wigg, a heritage colleague,  interviewed a former signalman from Bearly Junction (up the Birmingham line from Stratford) and gave us a copy of the recordings he made. We transcribed these into a Word document, which contains the descriptions of two incidents that happened along our line. The first one will be new to you, but you will recognise the second, which we will post in a future blog.

Here is the first one:

Greg Wigg interview with Andrew Whitehead, former Stratford & Broadway railway society volunteer, and Bearley Junction signalman.

I was great friends with a driver, or drivers at Stratford, and one day one driver told me he was on a steel train, and he was on a class 9, a 92, and it was in the afternoon where it was starting to get dusk and they were freewheeling down through Cheltenham Race Course and just beyond there he said we got an awful lurch he said, that the engine went about 30 degrees over and we’re talking about a heavy vehicle, you know, a 92 when its fully loaded is somewhere in the region of 110 - 115 tons, and when he got to Gloucester which is where they change crews, he reported to control that he had had a bad lurch near Cheltenham Race Course station. And when they investigated, on the down road, the down line, for a distance of about 30 feet the track was suspended on nothing.

Greg: God!

The bank had slipped away because they’d had rain, and he’d gone over that...

Greg: Jeez

...and the whole train went over it without coming off. He said they put about 50 train loads of spent ballast in to fill it up.

Greg: Crikey! And that was south of the tunnel, was that?

It was south of the tunnel, I think. I’m not too familiar with the line beyond Cheltenham Race Course. I don’t think he’s alive now, but he used to be a member of the Stratford & Broadway railway society. And he used to come to the meetings.

Greg: You can’t remember his name?

Yes, a Welshman,... no, I can’t remember it just off hand, but he was a good friend of mine, he was.

Coincidentaly we recently saw on line a photograph of a washout south of Hunting Butts tunnel, and this is likely to be the cause of the awful lurch reported.

This is the stretch of line in question, with the tunnel off to the left, and Swindon lane bridge centre right, with the bus on it. This stretch of the Honeybourne line belongs to us, but is unlikely to be used, at least in the near future. You can just make out Christ church in Cheltenham on the horizon.