Topsoil all over.

Friday on steels.

Another dry day, good ! Another opportunity to undercoat the purlins.

But the ones we needed (in green primer) were out of reach.

 

So first thing Neal got the little Telehandler and juggled with the 9 items, until the ones we needed (at the back, underneath) were on top.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We now cut to just after lunch (early departure of Yours Truly for family reasons) and the main pile had been shifted to the right, while the primered trusses were on trestles on the left, with an undercoat now applied. They are getting more and more protected, which is just as well, as winter and wet weather is approaching.

 

 

Still to do: four individual sides. Out of 18 that needed brushing clean, wiping with turps to remove drilling oil, and painting in undercoat. We're getting towards the end, phew.

Neal and John were in the shed, cutting and welding. A nice big working space has been opened up for us, good news. Or so we thought.

Ian finds a handy use for the 76077 boiler crinolines.

In fact the opened up area was designed for society stands, not us. We huddled back into our corner, and let 76077 put their stand up. All 3 of the canopy gang are shareholders, so we are all friends.

Where are you going to with those RSJs, Neal?

He's taking them down to the steam shed for trimming, and having their base plates welded on.

They are the uprights for the ring inside the P2 building.

 

 

Arrival of the uprights in the steam shed, and that nice new empty working area...

 

After lunch John and Neal started welding on the base plates. The other RSJ is in the process of being trimmed, behind.

 

On the way home we had to take a deviation via Laverton, as the A46 was choked up (once again) due to what appeared to be an oil spillage. That meant we were heading for the Cotswolds edge, and with the sun being at a good angle, we stopped to take an unusual wide angled shot of the train chugging up to Broadway, with 37 215 in tow.

35006 P&O at Laverton, with 37215 in tow.

If you zoom in, you can make out Broadway tower towards the left side of the horizon. It's very pretty up here.

It was here that Yours Truly helped to lay the first piece of extension track to Broadway, now 8 years ago.

Saturday on the PWay.

Autumn gala day, so limited possibilities on the track due to heavy train traffic. Yours Truly had a family day at home, but the gang pressed on with a trip to an occupation underbridge between the viaduct and Stanton yard, where ballast was spilling over the parapet.

 

Pictures by Bert Ferrule, with thanks.

 

 

Here are two shots of the gang on that underbridge, strengthened by a large cream cake, we heard. So that's why the ballast disappeared so quickly! The sleeper ends were freed, and ballast retention boards fitted.

They then moved on to the second site, half a mile south. This was just on the Toddington side of the viaduct.

... and afterwards.

Before....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here the job was to clear the four foot of surplus ballast.  Strange, isn't it, they are almost on top of the 15 arch viaduct (parapets in the background), but you'd never notice it. But without it we can't get to Broadway. Work is definitely starting on Monday 6th November, but the appeal is still short of even its minimum target of £350.000 (waterproofing only). The Trust is now going to have to dig into its reserves - for a moment even the funding of Broadway P2 was in doubt - unless more people respond to the appeal.

Here it is again:

https://www.gwrt.org.uk/donate/stanway-viaduct-appeal

Please see if you can help.

 

 

 

After  lunch the gang moved to the yard at Winchcombe to carry on tidying the site and making a clear space under and next to the mess coach, when it moves.

 

 

 

 

Of course we did once have a tidy yard, but every week something is taken away and the next week something else is added, so that after 5 years you have one big untidy yard.

Those manganese rails here are on offer, and the stop block behind them is due to go to Toddington.

Some of the rubber crossing pads can be used where at the moment we have some rather rough ballasted crossings, eg at Gotherington Skew, or at the top of the Working Lane approach. That should reduce the piles somewhat.

 

One more week, and then the track will be taken off the viaduct. Just minutes before that a short freight train will head for Broadway....

Tuesday on steels.

Sunshine and showers, three canopy gang members on site. And that was dry - phew! We can paint. Under the 'greenhouse' it is dry in principle, but then we get wind, and that can soak everything.

Two steamers on Tuesday, 2807 and 7903.

Here's 2807 just coming off shed, in the drizzle first thing on Tuesday morning. 115 years old this year...

 

 

 

Alan from the Toddington station staff offered us this vinyl poster, now superfluous after last weekend's successful gala.

We gave it to the Railway Archiving Trust shop (on the left), maybe someone would like it for a donation?

A rummage in the steam dept. skip also produced 3 puzzles, a thick railway book and some sort of rack, brand new (for shoes? CDs?) that we also gave to the RATs shop. They can turn this sort of stuff into cash for heritage projects.

 

Then it was time to get to work.

Neal brought the Telehandler, so that we could re-stack the 9 purlins in a way that allowed the 4 that still need painting to rest on top.

He also brought up the two uprights that had their tops and bottoms welded on. Here they are, next to the three imitation cast iron columns. This pile, when complete, will be sent off for galvanising.

Neal then picked up the other 4 uprights (out of 6 in total) and brought them down to the shed, where John will fit the remaining tops and bottoms.

 

 

The car park looked quite busy on Tuesday, esp for a shoulder season. Various schools have half term we ascertained, and also it's the 31st October - Halloween.

Our venerable 2-8-0 was in regular passenger service on Tuesday, and this fine shot was possible during a burst of sun in between showers. It sported a SPOOK SPECIAL headboard.

 

We spent most of the day cleaning and painting 4 sides of the last 4 purlins. At the end of the day they were done at last - now all have a minimum weather protection of one coat of primer, and another of undercoat.

 

The sun was failing rapidly as we put away the painting parephenalia.

Just as we were leaving Neal emerged across the car park with three of the other 4 uprights, also fitted with tops and bottoms. One left to do.

 

A last look in the shed, where other fabrication was going on.

This looks like a body shell for a small car... it's actually an ash pan, upside down. That's one hell of a puzzle that the guys have welded together.

Very impressive.

Wednesday with the Usketeers.

Bad news as soon as we set foot in the door - Paul had forgotten to buy the bacon rolls!

Paul, how could you !

He excused himself with a packet of very sweet jam roll, which we accepted grudgingly. We chewed over that (how ironic - we had a dentist's appointment coming later in the afternoon) and sipped our coffee.

Before tidying up.

With the hut itself now as good as complete, we are devoting our efforts to the landscaping around it, remembering that the site chosen for the rebuild of the Usk hut used to be a builder's tip.

The official unveiling of our big enamel plaque was offered to the company as a PR opportunity several months ago, but despite initial interest nothing has come of it. It is now too late to do anything this season, so although we were tempted to just go ahead and instal the enamel sign anyway, we decided to wait for next season and try again.

Today we continued with levelling the site around the tree with the topsoil that we shared with the drainage gang. It's great stuff.

Also, now that the pit for the deep level drain has had 4 extra rings and some soil added to it by the drainage gang, the new ground level has made the loose wall made of leftover Usk stone somewhat redundant, as both ground levels are at equal height here now.

 

 

Dave and John spent the whole day filling barrows with the new topsoil, which is very light and fluffy, and easy to shovel.

Paul enjoys carpentry, and spent the day making a pedestal for the safe, so that it can be admired more easily.

Here he is trying the T&G that he cut outside for size.

See also our heritage pattern Bakelite light switch.

 

The area outside the hut will gradually slope down to the foot of the tree, where there will be minimal fill.

The same gentle slope will also be evident on the roadway, once we get our spent ballast. This now looks like happening next year after all.

We saw the Telehandler at work in the yard, and when it had finished unloading the bogie flat we asked driver Martin if he would shift these half empty bags for us, which he willingly did. They are now behind the Telehandler. They are all almost empty, except the one with Cotswolds stone chippings, which we will take to Hayles at some point.

Later in the day the little pedestal was finished as far as the frame was concerned, and we decided on a test fitting with the safe.

It's door wouldn't open very far. We throught at first that we had built the pedestal frame too close to the rough stone wall, but it turned out that there was plenty of room, it was just the door that was stiff.

So we now need to oil the hinges. There is a hole on top, so we will try to pour some oil down that.

 

 

Then we had a visitor bearing a gift - Greg, fervent member of the Railway Archiving Trust (at Toddington, with its museum behind P2 on the station) - and it turned out to be a small cast iron hearth. This fits our fireplace, so we accepted the kind gift with gratitude.

Here is an overview of the recently filled in drain area, and the end of the Usk platform. Our plan is to make this one continuous slope, with a post and rail fence where the green grass is visible. That will mark the separation between Winchcombe station, and the PWay yard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While we were surveying the site, Walt was practicing his skills with two new buckets that we have acquired. RRV 'STEVIE' didn't come with any buckets, so we couldn't dig with it.

Now we have a second hand 60 inch bucket, just right for loading ballast or moving volumes of other material.

 

 

Back to landscaping though.

After the 'before', and tidying the area.

We got quite a long way with spreading the topsoil, and after removal of the mostly empty dumpy bags you can see how close to the pile it has come.

This is the view from the hut itself. A big achievement for today.

The only annoying thing is that our seeding of the lighter strip by the goods van has not (yet?) taken, as it is now getting too late in the year. Hence we can't yet seed the latest, darker area of topsoil, but will have to wait until next season.

Now a last look. The whole area has been smoothed over with topsoil, with a gentle slope down to the tree.

A suggestion made was to put a circular bench around the tree. That could look quite attractive, and might be of interest to visitors to sit on and watch trains, but we have no budget for that.

And now for a bit of history (this is a heritage blog, after all):

 

 

The cause of the 1976 Winchcombe derailment.

On 25th August 1976 the 06.35 coal train from Toton yard in Nottinghamshire to Severn Tunnel Junction derailed on the approach to Winchcombe as it crossed Chicken Curve. The freight train was headed by Peak class 45 076. 22 hopper wagons came off the rails and emptied their contents all over the approach to the station site. The chaos of twisted rails and wagons on their sides took more than a week to clear up.

 

Thanks to Greg Wigg's fascinating interview with former Bearley signalman Andrew Whitehead, we now have an eye witness (or nearly) account of what happened on that fateful day for our line:

Greg: Andrew Whitehead was a signalman at Bearley Junction on the day that the crash happened, and I’m just going to ask him now what happened on that fateful day.

Andrew: I was on duty doing the six in the morning to two in the afternoon shift. We had a freight train which was a regular thing come past our signal box at Bearley. It was the hot summer of ‘76 and right in the middle of the train was a big hopper wagon and all the wheels had got huge flats on the tyres and it was making one hell of a noise. But because we didn’t want it on our patch because the Midland Region of British Railways finished just beyond Stratford and then it went on to the Western Region we decided to - all the men in the box - decided to let it go. So it carried on, and it carried on until it got to Winchcombe. But by that time the ground had become that dried out that much with no rain or anything that the big embankment at Winchcombe here had moved. And as this bad wagon came round it rode up on top of the rail for about 50 yards, kept on the rail by the tension of the train which had a class 45 on the front and then came off. And then it gone after that to roll up like chestnut fencing the track into a big heap, until it got to such a state that everything came off. The guard jumped into the brambles by the big road bridge. They had to extricate him, you couldn’t see him apparently at all. When we came down here, that’s a colleague signalman and myself in the afternoon to have a look we got to the goods, the gates by the goods side here at Winchcombe because there was no passengers, no station, nothing, no buildings, and the police were on the gates because of this very valuable anthracite, and they waved us straight in thinking we were officials and we had a good look and we walked down to where it came off and we could see the track curved round then it went straight on the curve, then it curved again, and you could see a white mark on top of the rail where this wagon had rode until it just rolled the fencing up. The driver didn’t stop until he got well beyond, nearly to the bridge. Because as you probably realise a class 45 is nearly 4000 horsepower and he didn’t feel any particular jerk until it was a heck of a mess behind him. He stopped, tried to find the guard I believe, couldn’t find him, so he walked from here to Cheltenham Malvern Road, which is about 7 miles. He went up the steps and said to the signalman I think we’ve got a little bit of a problem at Winchcombe. That’s my recollections of this accident. (Foremarke Hall passes by) and it took them about, I believe, about a week to clear it up with a mechanical shovel. The line never really reopened ever again. They relaid the up line, this line, but decided it wasn’t worth pursuing. The shame is the track was in bad condition anyway and they were going to join Toddington box with Gloucester power box because the trunking, the concrete troughing, was already up the side, but that never happened. That was the end of the line.

 

There are very few photographs of this accident. It happened on a line without regular passenger services, with a duplicate line not far away. No one was hurt.

The picture below is what we could find, and the sources as far as known are given:

 

Source: Cornishman, Ron Bryant.

 

 

After one wagon derailed (the one with the wheel flats, as described by Andrew Whitehead) it formed an obstacle, and the rest of the train piled up behind it, shedding its load of coal. 

The front of the train was unaffected.

Source: Cornishman, Ron Bryant.

This photograph locates the site of the derailment very clearly. Destabilised by the slip on the curve, the wagons piled up just at the entrance to the yard. Today the carriage sidings are on the right, and the EE and PWay sidings on the left.

Note that both sets of rails are shiny and were clearly in use, with evidence of recent reballasting.

Source: RAT Railway Archiving Trust GWR0025

 

 

 

Empty coal wagons, on the down side. 

No more evidence of coal here, miraculously cleared up by local residents.

 

 

 

Source: RAT Railway Archiving Trust GWR0376

 

 

 

A view looking south towards the station some days later, evidenced by rust on the rails.

Some coal wagons have been lifted up right, or even placed back on the rails.

By this time the goods shed and weighbridge were the only remaining buildings on the site.

 

Source: RAT Railway Archiving Trust GWR0023

 

 

 

 

 

Twisted rails were cleared to one side.

This view is looking north, and over the site of the pottery below, with the pole route crossing the valley on the lower level.

 

Copyright: Paul Shannon.

Another later shot with rusty rails. Apologies to Paul Shannon for the use of the picture, but we don't know how to contact him. On the right is the pile of discarded track remains seen in the picture above. Next to it is track with a dark patch, which would be the reinstatement of the up line mentioned by Andrew. The down line in the foreground still has a twisted section, and while the wagons have been put to one side, upright, they still await removal. New cable troughing is also visible in the foreground, as mentioned by Andrew. Track panels with new sleepers await installation.

A minor detail of interest to volunteers today is the colour of the toilet block on the far side of the goods shed. It used to be brick coloured! (now white)