Back to full strength.

Friday team.

A team of four, with a specific task:- clearing up some of the piles of chaired sleepers by the Toddington drive. The chairs on the sleepers make them hard to stack, and move around, so we needed to dismantle them into their useful components. The sleepers come from siding 2 (part finished, but work is due to resume shortly) and around Hayles, where concrete sleepers were substituted after the Didbrook 2 relay.

 

 

Thanks to the electric impact guns we were able to easily undo the normal bolted chairs, and about three quarters of the throughbolters.

That left about a dozen throughbolt chairs still fixed to their sleepers, with the bolts seized and the nuts underneath spinning round instead.

Here David is cutting through one of the nuts. This is a very slow job, and he wasn't able to do all of them, leaving several sleepers with one chair still attached. 

 

 

 

 

 

We spent all day Friday doing this. With David, Tim and Yours Truly on dismantling, Paul was busy with the Telehandler sorting things into easily transportable piles. We ended up with several pallets of chairs, which will be taken to Winchcombe, while the throughbolters will go to 2807 to be turned into boot scrapers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is an example of the finished product. Some sleepers were set aside for CRC (for gardening), some for the Narrow gauge people, and some with base plates on were reserved for Gotheringon.

The orange bag contains a collection of litter dropped by the builders next door... it's what builders do, it seems. 

 

 

 

We got soaked by squalls from time to time, but ended the day with a good feeling of satisfaction, as we had dismantled everything that there was to do. Now it remains to actually load it, take it somewhere, and unload it. That means two Telehandlers, and a truck. Maybe another Friday?

Next Friday will see us enjoying an outing with a real PWay train! All useful, mind, all useful.

 

At the end of the afternoon we returned the Transit to Winchcombe, in a heavy rainstorm.  

 

You can see it here, still receding, as 3850 pulls away with the last train back to Toddington.

On the left is the new saloon coach, just arrived at Winchcombe. 

 Here is a more general view of it. 

 

 

 

 

We were intrigued by the retractable steps. These would have been made available to the track inspector travelling in the coach, so that he and his assistants could get down on to the track for a closer look.

There is even a little red light ot illuminate them. 

Didn't the GWR autocoaches have them too? 

Finally, a view from outside in. The sumptuous furniture is still under wraps. No doubt everything has to be cleaned and tested first.

 

Saturday - a sighting of the Bubble Car.

Correspondent Sam spotted our elusive Bubble Car on Saturday at Winchcombe, when it was out on a shake down and driver (re-) training trip.

 

Sam Daubney

 

It had stopped a bit short, to avoid any storm assault by customers. Luckily these had left on one of the orange timetable trips to Broadway.

One or two issues were reported, but it can't be long now before we see it in service at last, so don't miss it. Could it be paired with the newly arrived inspection saloon? 

 

 

Monday at Broadway.

A basically dry day, so three of us on the waiting room site. John spent the day on internal blocks, while Neal and Yours Truly spent much of the day dealing with the arrival of the material we found in front of the building at 08.30.

What greeted us on arrival.

This order was cleared for payment rather quicker than we anticipated, and here it is: Some additional concrete blocks, the joists for the main building, more bags of cement, and finally, plywood sheets and roof insulation for the store room. We are close to using it, but need to wait for a date from the specialist roofer for the outer covering. 

All our deliveries now have to be hauled down one platform, and up another. At least the weather was kind. 

 

The insulation and plywood sheets were trundled past our building, which shows the concrete blocks rising out of the brickwork on the end. 

Now that the joists there are in, two more courses of blocks are due to go on top of them. 

John spent most of the day behind the fireplace, where he added two more courses of blocks.

He left a square hole near the top. This, Neal explained, is to allow the chimney flue to bend backwards under the truss that will be placed there. The angle iron that you can see is temporary.

 

Quite some time was spent on Monday moving concrete blocks around, after heaving them up and down the platfoms. In the latter half of the day we found Neal inside the store room, working on the joists.

 

 

 

Wednesday, with all the Usketeers.

With the very welcome return of Julian, the Usketeers are now back to full strength of 4 members. 

 

 

We soon had him in harness, pushing a loaded wheelbarrow up to the tunnel mouth site. 

In truth, we need at least one barrow of bricks a day to keep us going on site, as well as, this time, a barrow of ballast and an old terracotta drain pipe, which will make a classic chimney for the hut, such as would have been used in the day. 

 

 

 

 

Paul equipped himself with a long batten, all stuff we have scrounged that was lying about the Winchcombe site.

This hut is costing the railway virtually nothing, we are very frugal. 

 

 

 

 

 

'Unfortunately' we have had relatively little rain these last 7 days, so our buckets, upturned towards the heavens, had but a modest harvest of water.

 

 

 

That left only plan B, dropping a bucket on a rope down one of the catch pits.

A well placed broom down after it made sure that it faced sideways at the bottom, to allow it to fill with water. 

 

 

 

 

While Paul and Dave busied themselves with brick laying, Jules and Yours Truly took care of the broken block wall around the concrete base.

The corner here has taken a knock. We cleaned it out, and inserted a new half block. 

 

 

 

 We then mixed up the ballast that we brought, to make a barrow of concrete mix.

 

 

 

 

This mix was then poured into the replacement blocks fitted a couple of weeks ago as well as over a broken one on the end.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here's an oversight of the infilled blocks. Nice and smooth, as well as solidly fixed.

 

Jules couldn't resist drawing in the fresh concrete.

At least it wasn't rude. 

 

 

 

 

Also, here's a picture of the new half block we fitted on the end. There was some muttering from the brick layers when we took some of their mortar, but not much. 

We didn't quite finish the concrete infilling, it's a bit difficult to judge the quantities required. Next week we'll be doing the rest, about another 50%. Then we'll look at the path up to the hut, which has a slope that has disintegrated.

As Jules and Yours Truly were concreting, Paul and Dave were laying bricks. We're on the chimney proper now, but still with the curtain wall at the back. This will go as high as the sleepers there - something still to work out.

 

 

And we did that too. How high should the roof be? What slope should it have?  How much headroom in the doorway? What about the corrugated iron roof sheets - we don't want them to hit anyone.

Here Paul is marking various possible heights with nails as reference points.

 

 

 

 

We made up a frame to try out various combinations.

 

With the measurements obtained like this we will lay out sleepers next time back in the yard, so that they can be cut to length. 

 

 

The brick layers consumed one barrow of mix, and so raised the chimney by another three courses. You can see the chimney rise from the mantlepiece, but still accompanied by the rear curtain wall. This will go as high as the sleepers there.

This was the end result today. The chimney has definitely started, and we are now thinking ahead of sleepers. Enough of these to build the hut have been sponsored by kind readers of this blog, so next time we will lay them out in the yard, and indicate where they need to be cut to size.

 

 On the way home we stopped at Broadway, to see what they had done on Tuesday.

 

It was a further block laying day at Broadway. The interior walls are now outpacing the outside ones, but have reached their final height. The joists are in, and you can see the ends, now enveloped by further blocks around them.

It's dark in there, as the roof is currently covered by scaffolding planks. We are waiting for a date from the roofer, before putting in the definite roof here. 

 

At the end of Wednesday, this was the view of the waiting room at Broadway, now definitely taking shape. We are on the case !

 

BTW, strange happenings to the blog viewing figures. They dropped from 20.000 per month to 15.000, then suddenly went back up, and currently stand at 39.000 views per month.

Was it something we said?