Busy Toddington.

Saturday at Southam.

A good gang of 8 on Saturday, not counting a new recruit - Steve ! An engineer by profession, hope he knows how to wield a keying hammer. We shall find out next week.

The first train of the trundled by as we loaded the tools. Our mission was a list of (minor) faults reported by track patrollers in the Southam area.

We are now down to one flatbed truck - the blue Transit. The white one is currently off MOT and off the road, the Citroen was sold with similar issues, as were the two Landrovers. We now have a Ranger, mostly for its crew transport ability (5), but also with a modest load bearing capacity.

 

 

We entered at Bishop's Cleve and drove south to the Kayte Lane foot crossing. This seems to have fallen out of use, and is quite overgrown.

At the same time we found this drainage pit with a lid thrown into it.

 

Rather than call the drainage gang, we decided to save them the bother and reposition the lid straight away.

 

Call us suspicious, but a few yards away is a new caravan site, set up across the route of the footpath.

Could that be dissuading people from using it now?

 

We had a long wash list of missing clips, broken plastics and loose (or alternatively: seized) bolts, but motored through it with ease.

 

A bit slower was the phenomenon of wet beds, resulting in pumping and the white dust evident on sleeper ends.

We robelled the sleepers here, which is a temporary fix, but poor drainage in the shallow cutting leading up to Kayte Lane bridge is the underlying issue here. That needs more intensive surgery.

We picked out two representative rocks for you:

- One sharp edged and still good,

- The other, all rounded off, and no longer suitable for holding the track in place. 

It's amazing what this water based pumping can do, merely through the passage of trains on top of it.

 

Operations were interupted by the necessary passage of trains, here one headed by 2807.

 

Occasionally we would stop for a brew, but the yummies had to be carefully guarded.

Stop thief !

 

Moving on south, there were more bolts that needed tightening / unseizing.

We did have a rash of seized fishplate bolts a while back, and there seem to be fewer now.

It seems to us that the seizures may have been caused by over tightening in the past, and thus part stripping the thread.

We now use a torque wrench for the last bit of tightening.

The fence alongside the last straight before CRC allowed us to stand close to the line and admire the big Pacific.

 

Later P&O ran round, allowing this portrait by the bracket signal. It's raining now - you can see the drops in front of the smoke box.

Walking opposite P2 at CRC we noticed a striking difference in the colour of the mortar used. At the time the mixes were made with a shovel straight into the mixer, and this may have led to different ratios of cement and sand. Or perhaps the colour additive was forgotten one day?

At Broadway we are doing our best to avoid this, by measuring all the sand and cement with the same bucket, and using a consistent quantity of colourant with an old cup.

 

We also had a debate about a word on this new sign ( we seem to have a rash of addtional signage these days)

In the last line, is it 'railway staff which may be present, or 'railway staff who may be present'?

During the day we ticked off quite a few of the reported faults, and felt rather good about doing so.

We deserved a tea and a sit down, but not for some, when an old diesel approached...

Monday at Broadway.

Two of us on brick laying, with Neal at Toddington on ridge purlin assembly.

 

It was the second day on the second course of the plinth.

This course is laid on a DPC membrane, so required a lot of mortar, and a special trip to the local hardware shop for another tin of black dye. We get through a lot.

The GWR used finely sieved ash to colour the mortar dark grey, but we haven't got any of that.

 

While crossing the footbridge to bring in the tools we were disappointed to see that we had had a dog walking visitor.

The result was this sprinkle of urine !

John doggedly laid one 3.7Kg blue after another during the day, using almost two whole mixes.

The result at the end of the afternoon was the second course of blues down the front and across to the back corner. We counted 95 blues laid in all, a very good performance for the day, given that the DPC itself takes a lot of time and extra mortar to bed it down as well.

Wednesday with the Usketeers.

All 4 of us today, and good progress, with interesting stuff happening around us.

 

 

Paul brought a length of wood to attach to the bottom of the larger gate. This will allow him to mount the drop bolt a little lower down, as it didn't quite reach the ground. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dave brought his Titan SDS drill, a nice piece of kit which comes with a case containing every sort of drill bit you could imagine.

With a large drill bit Dave made a hole in the tarmac, into which he inserted a tube for the bottom of the drop bolt.

The pair of gates is now fully installed, but could do with some sort of lock. We did bring a length of chain for the padlock, but it proved to be too small.

 

While John was digging the next two post holes further along, Dave got out a shovel and cleaned the edges of the tarmac. We like to leave a tidy site. He also back filled any holes left after planting posts.

With the edge of the road revealed again, Dave joined Paul in fixing the rails to last week's posts planted.

If you feel that the fence line is not quite straight, this is because we are constrained by the location of a power cable +/- along the same line, so can't plant our posts just where we happen to want them. The roots of the large tree on the right also dictated the positions of some of the posts, off the ideal line.

In this picture you can see how near to the existing vegetation John has to dig some of the holes.

Lunch time came all too soon. We have availed ourselves of a small occasional table, and now eat our snap in great comfort.

Here is a record shot of the fence marching uphill, away from the pair of gates that we installed. While it looks kind of finished, we in fact still need to fit pairs of intermediary posts between the uprights.

The redundant Heras fencing panels are being stored nearby.

This is what the finished gates look like now. A large one for vehicles, and a smaller one for pedestrians coming from the coaches parked off to the left. (if any)

 

 

The last shot taken this Wednesday shows the constrictions of the site, principally where a large tree intrudes into the intended fence line. We are aiming to place it 1m from the edge, leaving enough room for a lawn mower to get up outside it, and high enough off the ground to get the nose of the lawn mower underneath.

Elsewhere on a busy Toddington site today:

On Monday Neal worked on the second ridge purlin, which looks pretty much finished here, and is probably waiting for a fork lift to become available to lift it to the right, and put the third part completed purlin in its place.

 

The steam department can be seen here installing the repositioned information boards for the various locomotive projects that we have on site. These used to be located near to the coal bunkers, but were cut off from public sight when the perimeter around the coal bunkers was made larger.

 

 

 

A team from the C&M department spent the day replacing spalled bricks at the end of the parlour road.

These will have been laid in the early 1980s, some of the earliest activities on site after we purchased the railway line.

 

 

 

Another team from our C&M department was repainting the outside of the Cotswolds Halt building.

Instead of chocolate brown it is now in dark stone.

 

 

 

 

 

Painting the building was no easy task, and we see the gang here on the platform, 6 on a 10ft bench, enjoying a rest and a mug of tea.

Nearby, by the museum coach, Keith and Greg were stripping a GWR cash box for refurbishment. It was all sorts of colours (after a long service life), but was once varnished, which is the effect that we would like to achieve again.

 

 

 

A quick look into the Cotswolds halt showed a fine offering of boot scrapers (£40, for 2807) and repurposed rail ends for such things as anvils or door stops. Andy, who is organising this amazing little fund raiser for the PWay tool fund, has even resorted to cleaning and painting them.

They are £35 for a 12 inch one, and £25 for a 9 inch one. Pay in the Cotswolds Halt. Other sizes on request.

 

 

 

We were intrigued by a new (2023) acquisition in the Narrow Gauge. (have you been on it yet?)

 

 

This is a standard gauge Wickham trolley, re-gauged to 2ft. It is in perfect working condition, and in fact its proud owner briefly started it for us as proof.

It's number is DB965082. There's more about it here:

http://www.toddington-narrow-gauge.co.uk/stock/Wickham/

 

What we found amazing was the transmission, known as friction drive. This is very basic, but effective. It works with a disk fixed to the crank axle, which is touched by the outside perimeter of a disk linked to the driving axle at 90 degrees. A lever at the top moves the driving disk from the centre of the engine disk to the outside, thereby making the trolley go faster, or slower, or backwards. Ingenious !

 

 

 

Originally the trolley was fitted with a JAP V twin, but was later re-engined with a single cylinder 650cc Petter.

You can make out the valve rods here.

Hand start of course, but no problem as there is a valve lifter.