Braunton up Honeybourne bank

Friday on steels.

A trip to Broadway to look for a number of items of P1 paperwork (not found though) and then back to Toddington to paint purlins and move the steels about, ready for a shotblaster to do his work.

In the Toddington car park there is the first half of the 300 odd sleepers from the viaduct in temporary storage. One wagon's worth. It will be back with the other half.

Volunteers are requested to park in the middle of the car park, not anywhere near these sleepers (Telehandler traffic) or anywhere by the fence (unloading traffic)

While  at Broadway we came across this belt buckle. We hadn't seen that before, presumably a gift from a supporter?

There's something attractive about brass items, and we liked this one. We wondered if every stationmaster had one, with the name of the station engraved on it.

However, after a search on the internet we discovered that it is almost certainly fake, as you can easily buy identical ones on Ebay or Etsy.

What a shame. Similar fakes exist for 'GWR' coat hangers, and cast iron BEWARE of TRAINS notices. Beware !

Back at Toddington. Yours truly started painting the purlins again (18 sides to do, 9 done by the end of the day) while Neal and John prepared the site for the visit of a shot blaster. This meant moving the purlins around (inevitably, and again).

 

 

 

As the shotblaster will be making a bit of a mess and we don't want our nicely painted purlins covered in rust particles, Neal and John started moving the purlins south to next to the ash pit.

 

Not all the purlins were moved today. Some were moved around under the greenhouse, so that new surfaces could be exposed for painting. Thanks, guys...  So yes, we got 9 sides done, when the sun went down, earlier every day, and it went dark.

The shotblaster is going to do the fascia boards, which have been laid out for him here. The millscale is just too tough for us to remove by conventional methods, so we capitulated and got a professional in.

The piles of angles in the background are also part of the job. For some reason the second packet of angles was much worse than the first (with which we built the purlins).

As you can see from the light this is the end of the day on Friday, and in the foreground are the items that are going to go away for galvanising. 

That's three manufactured cast iron posts, and the components of the internal steel frame of the building.

No news from the planners BTW. It must be 6 months by now...

 

 

 

As it was getting dark we caught Neal on his other job at Toddington - Neal is a multi tasker - and here he is laying in the reinforcement matting for a replacement bit of concrete by the coal dock. The old stuff had risen up and was no longer serviceable.

Another job for Mr. Fixit !

Saturday along the line.

A bright, sunny but cold day. Near freezing overnight! After a tiring week on and around the viaduct, we nonetheless had 8 volunteers for a day of fault fixing along the Broadway extension.

As we put our tools in the van a little freight train passed by.

We then went over to the CH car park to dig out the trailer and get the mini digger on board.

As Moses (Adam in the Ranger) would not come to the mountain (the trailer) the mountain had to come to Moses. Well, that was the easiest way of hooking up.

Then Dave mounted the mini digger and drove it on board, so that we could put the straps on.

We suggested that Dave remain seated and we put the straps over his legs, but that idea was not received with the enthusiasm it deserved.

We set off for Stanton yard, where the two teams separated.

 

 

Dave and Adam headed north to Laverton and beyond, where a number of concrete sleepers needed digging out with a view to their replacement.

 

 

These pictures are by Adam, and show how Dave dug out the sleepers that need changing.

We haven't had to change many concrete sleepers so far, they behave themselves pretty well. But when one does need changing it's a heck of a job, with digging and pulling.

The little mini digger helped a lot here.

Afterwards Dave trundled off back to the Ranger and its trailer. Wonder how they turned it round?

The second team headed south towards the viaduct, to start on a lengthy list of minor faults, that we eventually ticked off over about a mile. Most involved loose clips.

While in the proximity of the viaduct we wandered over to see how the contractors were doing. They were ammenable to a chat and a quick site visit.

Removal of the ballast has started. This is the top layer, leaving the infill layer for a second stage. It was dug out by a small 360 about half way along, and taken to the northern end and a storage site there by a 6T and a 9T dumper.

A load of ballast arrives at the storage site.

Removal of the top ballast was about 50% done at the time. We were impressed by the contractor working on a  Saturday.

One of the big dumpers was happy to pose for us and stop for a chat.

There seems to be  a wide area here for  the storage, possibly the result of some dumping of ash here, as was done at Broadway opposite the goods shed.

 

We left them to add to the pile, and rejoined our Transit for more fault finding in the northern direction.

The reported loose clips were mostly caused by scored concrete sleepers, which we solved by adding a second rubber pad. That made the clip tight again. We suspect the sundry loose clips have been like this since the line was laid in 2008. It was admittedly fairly low priority stuff, but someone has to do it at some point.

We had a new recruit Peter with us on Saturday. Together with new-ish recruit Graham he heaved at the Duff jack, with an encouraging smile from Bert Ferrule. The best lessons are learned when you work things out for yourself, not when someone tells you, we thought. SHC clip removal clearly fell into this category.

Near Stanton Fields we came across two pairs of hardwood sleepers (used alongside centre drains, as they can be cut to size) and the outer edges had been covered in ballast.

It is good practise to expose wooden sleepers along their full length, as under a layer of ballast they remain wet and rot quickly. You can see a covered sleeper end on the right, and a newly dug out one on the left, which is clearly much wetter that the area nearest to the camera, which was not under ballast and had a chance to dry out.

Wednesday with the Usketeers.

Well, with one other. Two of the gang had to bale out today, but the other two - yours truly and Paul - carried on regardless.

Also out today was the hired in Volker tamper. It's here for a week, and has already worked down the Defford straight and round Chicken Curve. Today it was off on its way to Manor Lane, to be followed by Cheltenham.

The tamper starting its engines first thing in the morning.

Then it moved off, captured by a short video clip:

On Tuesday it was on the Defford straight:

Paul took the second video of it at work, and a couple of photographs taken during the day:

 

This one was taken at the start of the Defford straight, just coming out of Hayles Abbey halt, with its bridge visible in the background.

On board the 'spaceship' (or so it looks), but which in fact dates back to 1990.

First thing we did was to provide Dave (when he is back next week) with some more blocks for the wall on the side of the slope leading down to the inspection pit.

We still have quite a few blocks left over, but hopefully one day this could become a platform extension for the PWay mess coach.

 Paul spent the whole day on the second hand gate.

Paul trims 4ft off the end of the gate.

 

We decided that the ideal width would be 10ft, instead of the 14ft as the gate came to us. As a 10ft gate it should also hang by itself from the gate post, and not need the little carrier wheel on the end that it came with. Our ground is too rough for that.

One day we reckoned this gate will be life expired, so we need to build the gateway in such a way that it can easily be replaced by a new gate. But how big are those normally? A look on Google revealed that you can take your pick - anything from 4ft wide to 14ft wide, in stages of 1ft. So at 10ft we are OK, and the Telehandler will fit through (it's 8ft wide).

Yours truly spent most of the day ferrying stuff around the site, principally the old Heras fencing which used to surround the inspection pit, before it was raised.

That was quite tiring, so a good lunch would be very welcome.

 

This is what Mrs. Blogger had in mind for us... lovingly healthy.

Unfortunately Paul was there with his Jam roll, so some of those calorie reductions may have come back on....

During the day RRV 'STEVIE' trundled by on its way to Chicken curve, where its new bucket - just a few days on the railway so far - was immediately put to good use shifting ballast after the passage of the tamper there.

Walt sent in the three pictures below, of STEVIE, Walt and Chris bringing ballast to some of the areas lifted high and dry after the passage of the tamper. 

You can see just how useful the new 60 inch bucket is. And it was originally intended for use at Broadway!

 

Finally, from Chicken Curve, we have this lovely shot of STEVIE heading back home in the setting sun. What a great shot.

 

Meanwhile, back at the Usk hut:

The two upright bricks in the picture have been positioned so that we can see where the gate should be located, and how much fencing we need on each side.

We then worked out the positions of the concrete grandfather posts, which will support the main uprights so that they do not sit in the ground and rot. Even with treated wood such posts go in about 10 years if just burried in wet clay.

At the end of the day we had visitors who came to admire our work and have a bit of a chat.

Ian, Bob and Rick watched Paul re-fit the end of the shortened gate, for which this saw was indispensable.

Braunton up Honeybourne bank

On the way home we ran into Neal at a woodyard, and Neal had an unexpected item of news for us: a steam excursion would be going up Honeybourne bank in half an hour! That was too good to miss.

Here is what we filmed, from an overbridge near Mickleton:

https://youtu.be/rdgesIE-dPY

This was all rather hasty, so any knowledge about the loco and its trip had to be gleaned from Google afterwards.

It turns out that this was 34046 Braunton, on a Cotswolds Explorer tour. For some reason it is relatively rare for a steam tour to go up Honeybourne bank, in our experience they have all gone down. So copping one going hard uphill is rare. We think this one had a bit of a shove from the class 47 tacked on behind.

According to the tour itinerary, this one too should have been going downhill, and back up via the Golden Valley. For some reason the tour has turned around, so we were lucky today.

A bit of history.

While helping with the dismantling of the Broadway Journey through Steam exhibition, we noticed a drawer full of tickets that related to our line. They belong to a private collector.

 

One is a ticket (on the right) from Broadway to - Liverpool! That probably trumped the rest of the booking office takings on that day.

See you next week!