Work at Broadway intensifies.

Thursday on site.

We're gearing up to start work on the foundations of the new building. Neal was setting out the site, while John and Yours Truly removed three panels of spearhead fence which were in the way.

This proved to be harder than it looked. The feet were well into the ground, and instead of weak mix plain concrete had been used. It proved a tough nut to crack, and after a while Neal could not resist having a go.

We got there in the end, but the big sledgehammer had to come out to crack the concrete round the bases of the uprights.

Once loosened, the three panels were moved to one side, making available a much needed area for stacking supplies that are expected to arrive on Monday. More news of that further down.

It always amazes us what skills Neal posesses. His background is in joinery, not the building trade at all.

But here he is setting out the site, an area where a big rectangular foundation ring will be poured.

We had the visit of a building professional in the afternoon, and a most useful discussion on the finer details was had. All is going well so far.

Saturday cutting and shutting.

Another very enjoyable day. Cool, crisp weather, and a great bunch of guys. We carried on cutting the cripled ends at Manor Lane, and did really well - 5 lengths, 20 cuts, 40 holes drilled.

This was the sight that met us at Manor Lane. We're not quite round the bend yet (protestations to the contrary do we hear?) and the signal post is quite some distance away.

Looking the other way, we did start at the Gotherington Loop bracket signal, just visible here, so there is progress.

Our target is the foot crossing half way down the straight to Bishops Cleeve. Beyond that is still fish plated, but back in the day better rail was used and the ride is good here.

We were keen as mustard to get going, but sadly there was a leftover issue from the previous time, as can be seen here. The sleeper was laid (back in the day) slightly out of true so that the nearest recently drilled fishplate holes are too close to the sleeper. It needs to be moved.

That means digging out....

The digging was by Yours Truly and Leigh, so no picture, but here are Leigh and Nick shoving the sleeper along a bit, after jacking just off the deck to relieve the weight on it.

The next rail was now some distance away. Before moving it, Bert Ferrule cut the two crippled ends off, watched by Nick.

'If I catch fire, will you put me out Tim? Nah, I haven't got a certificate for this thing'

Leigh then cut 4 new holes in the newly exposed ends. This is done with a motorised core drill, and you can see one such core that has just popped out.

New pad - old pad, with a hole worn in it.

Once the rail had been moved up we replaced any worn pads with new ones. It's amazing how this wear takes place underneath the rail, out of sight of anyone.

It's the constant expansion and contraction due to changes in temperature throughout the year.

While chewing over our lunch we noticed this trio of planes fly high over us. The two outer ones seemed to race the middle one, and at one point crossed over each other. Strange. Was it a Russian 'Bear', accompanied by RAF fighters?

Nick checked it out on Flight Tracker, and it turns out that all three planes were civilians, on their way to the USA. Nothing to do with each other at all.

 

At this point (in fact all of the rail south of Toddington) the rail is second hand.

It can be interesting to check out the various steelworks that produced this stuff. Also the dates it was rolled. (one was rolled as late as 1980!)

This one was new to us: Cargo Fleet Iron Works co.

This was a Middlesborough rolling mill that was closed by British Steel in 1973, with the loss of 2000 jobs.

Such a shame.

Once we got going we did pretty well - with just 8 of us on Saturday - and by the end of the afternoon we had done 5 pairs of rails. That's 20 cuts, 40 holes drilled, and a lot of small bits of rail left lying around.

STEVIE the RRV picked up quite a few bits on Wednesday, and on Saturday we picked up a lot more. Most are about 2ft long, although there are shorter bits.

If you are interested in buying any of these drop us a line via the contact form. They make useful door stops, or anvils and such like.

Eventually they will be weighed in.

Here we are at the end of Saturday. Just coming off the curve from Gotherington to Manor Lane bridge. That's the distant signal for Gotherington loop that you can see there. 

We are aiming to go a bit over half way down that straight. After that the rail changes to a better quality, and there are no further crippled ends.

This is the same point seen with the sun behind. Just coming off the curve, on to the straight.

As you can see the light was starting to fail, so after 5 panels we called it a day and went home.

Here we are dropping off all the rail ends, making neat piles in Winchcombe yard.

 

Also in Winchcombe yard was the Warflat, now loaded with extra sleepers, destined for Toddington yard sidings.

Another fun job awaits us.

Monday at Broadway.

The arrival of a team of tree surgeons meant a crane was to be on site.

Could be useful for the P2 team, what could we make it do?

The crane took out the tree by the lamp post. It is brighter here now, but we are sad that another iconic Scots pine has gone.

Furious telephoning last week achieved the delivery of 450 concrete blocks Monday morning, plus 2 tons of sand and 20 bags of cement. That's a hell of an ask to shift all that over to P2 with a wheelbarrow, so the presence of the crane was a perfect fit for us.

'Top floor, please....'

 

The tree surgeons used the crane to get themselves to the top of the tree with their chainsaw.

From the top they chopped their way downwards, always attached to the crane.

We have now filled one of the two wagons made available to us for spoil removal. The grey one was still empty when this picture was taken, but not for long.

Seen from the other side, two spoil wagons by the signal box. As you can see we had a flurry of snow overnight, and on our way to Winchcombe we saw a car, upside down in a ditch. So drive carefully, is the message.

In the distance is the railway's little dumper, which had to be taken back to Winchcombe on Monday as it would be in use on the Tuesday there.

Last Friday Neal dug out the corner of the building's foundation ring.

It looks good in the picture, but was in fact not yet deep enough. The building is located precisely on the line where the cutting ends and the embankment starts. The southern end is just in the made up ground, so foundations need to be rather deeper here.

An overview of the site on Monday, with the crane for the tree in the background.

We have a Mermaid tipper wagon on site as well, but it's a private vehicle sent up for storage, so we can empty it, but not fill it again (or at least take it anywhere).

Next, Neal started to fill the grey, second spoil wagon with the arisings from the initial foundation dig in the southern corner.

There's a lot more spoil to come out yet. Both wagons will be full; what do we do with the rest?

A pallet of blocks is lifted across.

With the tree taken out, the crane became available to us and we organised the transfer of the building materials. Marvellous, that saved us so much work!

Neal and John watch the cut up tree being loaded by a tractor.

 

Alongside P2 we now have 450 concrete blocks, two dumpy bags with a tonne of sand in each, and 20 bags of cement.  All this will make up the walls of the foundations around the slab, and will be underground.

We're spending the Trust's money here:

450 blocks - £900

Sand & cement - £500

Concrete for the foundation ring - £5000, plus the cost of the concrete pump.

All this funding is depleting the reserves of the Trust, which is also coping with the cost of the viaduct works, still only partially funded in its viaduct appeal.

Blog hits have shot up since we started the P2 works. If you are interested - we presume that you are, if you are watching our little team - please consider making a donation to the Trust for this. We'd be very grateful. We feel guilty spending money that wasn't donated, just depleting reserves.

https://www.gwrt.org.uk/donate/how-to-donate 

Thanks for your help.

(It would be interesting to know if you made a donation, as we don't see the bank account at the other end. Drop us a line, or make a blog comment.)

Later in the day we took another picture of the brown James Taylor wagon, restored by Alex and Mark's team, and lettered with the details of the second Winchcombe coal merchant.

The last picture of Monday - the rear foundation trench, 1.5m deep nearest to the camera where the ground is made up, and 1m deep in fresh ground where Neal is digging.

The spoil is initially going into the middle, some of it later into the grey wagon.

Tuesday at Broadway.

Very cold and dry. That was a bit lucky for us, as the ground was frozen and easy to work on, without getting inches of clay and pine needles clumped round your boot.

Here is the opening shot. Neal has dug the far cross trench (being the outside wall of the 'gents' room), and most of the rear one.

The clay arisings are now going into the second wagon, and here Neal is clearing what came out when he dug the rear trench.

There's a wide bucket for loading, and a narrow one for the footings.

This is the same shot, taken from the opposite direction. The trench is 1.5m deep here and 1m deep in the distance, the greater depth being required to deal with the falling natural terrain.

Late morning Neal had turned the corner and was working on the cross trench by the footbridge steps.

The tricky thing here was that as we are replicating the original building and its site, we are meeting the original foundations. They are made out of Cotswolds stone ballast and cement. The little digger struggled a bit, but we did get there.

Later in the day the building inspector came to check what we were doing.

The depth was good, we were just asked to vary the depth in visible steps, rather than gradually, as Neal had done.

Neal laid two thick planks across the already excavated trench, to enable the digger to scoop out the required step from the correct angle.

While working under the sun the conditions were +/- tolerable, but this was considerably less so towards the end of the day when the sun went in. There was a thin, biting wind that we hadn't noticed before.

At this point, and with the requested steps dug out, Neal started on the middle cross trench, which will be under the southern wall of the waiting room itself. The lump in the middle indicates the width of the 'Gents' space that will be a store room. It is slightly smaller than before, due to the proximity of the trees and the ground increasingly falling away.

 

And then a couple more finds from Tuesday.

This is half of an original 1904 window cill. It's in natural stone, and beautifully carved.

Note how the corner is rounded, and set back.

This on the other hand is a sample modern cill, the same as those used on P1.

The corner is square, and there is no detail.

In the 1904 version the corner was built up with 'specials' which, when laid one on top of another, formed a decorative column.

The brick had been moved back a tad to show the shapes more clearly.

 

Here is how the 2018 window column was created.

There is an additional first brick which translates the square detail into a round one, then the actual special goes on top of that.

The cill itself is a cast product.

 

 The best find so far was made on Monday:

A little muddy sphere was discovered in a ball of clay. Neal showed it to us with great pride (we do keep an eye on each excavated bucket full) and said there was a text that he couldn't make out.

We took the little glass sphere home and cleaned it. Now the text was legible: GO GREAT WESTERN !

Neal was then able to Google the phrase, and hit upon three such little spheres in a set at Didcot. They are inkwells. The phrase, we ascertained from another museum, was used in the late 1920s, early 1930s. So our little survivor is nearly 100 years old.

The inkwell came out of the layer of ash that is present just south of the old building, and like the ash layer with porcelain we explored by the old goods shed, may well come from an ash and scrap pile at Cheltenham Spa station. Periodically this was shovelled into a wagon and tipped along our line.

Wednesday with the Usketeers.

Also a freezing day - minus a half on arrival. We had our coffee and biscuits in the Usk hut, and shut the door behind us. In that way the low temperature was bearable.

 

But we didn't stay there long. Normally we would spend a good half our setting the world to rights, but today we wanted to get the Telehandler out early, before round about 10am, when the PWay gang will want it for more cutting & shutting.

We need to clear this pile of dirt along the fence line, and make the area ready to receive the compost bins operated by the FoWS.

 

Paul was in his usual ebullient mood. He bought 3m of lead sheet, and with this he started to make little caps for the tops of our wooden posts. In this way, suspended on godfather posts, and with caps on top, the posts should last a very long time.

Dave put the bucket on the Telehandler and took a run at the pile of dirt. Inside it were lumps of GWR slagstone, and two lumps of concrete used by the S&T department for dollies etc on the ground. A bit of a nasty mixture really, not forgetting all the bramble on top and bindweed roots inside. We discarded the first scoop, then used the second and third scoops to boost the levels near the new fence.

Paul soon got into his stride with the lead caps, which you can see him here beating around the tops of the posts.

Sadly the cold started to get to him, particularly as he was mostly standing still, and after a couple of hours he reluctantly headed back home.

Here is the future site for the FoWS compost bins then, just inside the PWay compound. This is as far as we can go with the Telehandler. The site still needs a bit of further care with shovels, and we did about half of that during the day.

Mid morning there was a knock on the door, and we had a pleasurable visit from Peter, Robert and Bob. They demanded bacon rolls (which we were known to consume) but sadly today there were none.

Two other jobs today - John gave the fencing a second coat of Creocote, and the other three put up the 8ft BH rail post for the 40,- notice, ready for attaching next week. Three retirees can just about carry 8ft of BH rail, we discovered....

With Paul retiring feeling overly cold, it was Dave and Yours truly that started to spread out the earth collected from the muddy pile by the edge of the cutting. This job is nearing completion - a few more bumps and valleys to sort, and then finally to spread out the topsoil remaining under that tarpaulin. Once spring is here we can then seed the soil.

Here is the overview at the end of the day. The fence is finished but for the lead tops, most of the soil spread out, the post is up.

Interestingly, our good work on this fence has been noticed, and it is suggested we build an identical one at Toddington, down the old drive, to replace the Heras fencing that is currently there. It is indeed very ugly, and there is a desire to fit something more suitable and railway-like, without breaking the bank. Money is tight at the moment.

We should know more next week. The Usketeers might become the fencers - that's what the musqueteers did, wasn't it - fencing?