Chimney works.

With the Friday gang at Gotherington South 

Five of us, a little specialised team at Gotherington, to swap out the crossing, without the usual large crowd implied with the full gang working on this one.

 

 

The same 5 also screwed down a number of base plates, until the drill got jammed in one of the holes - typically, the sort of thing that happens when you think you are doing really well.

It took ages to get the drill bit back out, with the limited small tools we had with us. 

 

 

 

 

 

STEVIE then lifted the new crossing close to its position.

The old one was unacceptably worn. The new one also has an improvement, in that it is slightly inclined, to fin into the curve in which it sits. The old one was flat, having come from elsewhere.

 

 

 

 

 

As you can probably see from the picture above, the new crossing is longer than the old one, so two rails had to be cut to make it fit.

 

Dave D, looking like a pirate with an eye patch, heaved this baby sideways with a bar. 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the new crossing, inscribed with an addressee, and the inclination that it has. It is fitted temporarily on to the old timbers - the replacement of the old timbers is currently at the half way stage, with about 10 being done per day (out of 53 in total).

 

 

 

With the other rails cut to size, STEVIE was able to lift in the new crossing. The fit was perfect!

As STEVIE needs to get across the turnout on his way to CRC the next day, the crossing was attached temporarily. Just enough for the RRV to cross. 

 

 

 

 

The crossing was fly fished at one end, and this end, still loose, will have a set of temporary plates and clamps fitted before Saturday.

The GWSR is a rural railway (when not encroached by compulsory housing estates growing like mushrooms) and we were amused by this farmer's wife, who walked into the middle of a field (a flock of ewes being on the far side) but no further, and rattled a bucket of sheep nuts. The ewes promptly gambled over, and she led them out of this field into the next one. They never got the sheep nuts !

Or how to corral sheep, if you haven't got a sheepdog. 

Clever stuff.

Before fitting the temporary fish plates, we tested the connection with one set of wheels of STEVIE. No probs there, they rolled straight across.

The above was all recorded with the new Blogger camera. It worked OK, it's just a bit more cumbersome at home when uploading the result onto the desktop. The camera is waterproof, so all the connections are hidden behind a cover that is rather difficult to open. We worked it out in the end, as you can see.

 

Prior to joining the gang at Gotherington, we were asked to show a wood carver and a welder around the shed at Toddington. They are preparing for a Honeybourne line artistic commission, and wanted to get to know our railway.

Here they are, looking at two of the three columns for P21 at Broadway, which Neal is preparing in the loco shed (attaching steel plates top and bottom).

They were thrilled by what we had achieved. They had never seen a shed full of steam engines before. You forget how normal we think this is, working here, and seeing the old kettles most days.

This picture was done with the phone camera, so still has that aura. Sadly, the mild acid solution to cement dust didn't work in our case. We tried. Thanks though for suggesting it. We'll probably work with a combination of the two.

 

 

Monday at Toddington.

More work on the steels for Broadway. But last Wednesday Neal and John had a successful day's block laying in the 'Gents' at the south end of the building.

How did they do?

 

 

 

Well, they built the interior block wall to within one course of the top. 

The fireplace side now needs to follow, in the Thermalite ones. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a shot from inside the 'Gents' upwards, to show how high they got.

One more course of blocks to go here then. 

 

 

 

Seen from the outside, it becomes clear that we still need to put in the last window, and that depends on the specials that we ordered.

The weather remains very disturbed still, so brick laying will be hit and miss for a while yet. 

 

At Toddington:

Work was going on to remove redundant BT phone wires, and associated telegraph poles. 

This will improve the look of the area, provided that the CCTV camera isn't screwed to our historic building instead.

 

Outside the loco shed it was good to see the 'Bubble Car' getting an airing. 

It's had a lot of work done to it, most recently fault finding and rectification. There is no official news of an entry to service, but 2026 looks like the year (fingers crossed)

 

The purpose of the visit to Toddington was to work on the stanchions for Broadway, which need to go to galvanising soon. Despite being 'in the greenhouse' they have gone rusty. Surprise! It is actually damp under that glass, and the wind blows the rain in. Luckily the galvanisation process can stand a little light rust, but we took off what we could. Under the rust were still some traces of millscale, so we took that off too, at least on one of them. Two more to go.

The next pictures are a little out of focus, as we are still getting accustomed to the new camera. It looks like the shutter speed was set too low for indoors, so apologies for that.

 

 

 

Neal here can be seen preparing the base plates for the bottoms of the stanchions. He put the tops on earlier.

The bases too were covered in millscale, which is what he is grinding off here. 

 

 

 

 

 

Yours truly cleaned all three stanchions of surface rust, and then the LH one of millscale.

Two more to go, for next time. 

 

 

 

Wednesday with the Usketeers.

Up to full strength today, with three on site.

Surprise: We are about to be joined by a fourth, a repentant Julian, who is coming back, after 'going on furlough' during the Usk hut build. People are very welcome to return once personal circumstances change again, but they do have to jump through a number of administrative hoops first.

Maybe we will see him next week? In any case, we already prepared a fourth chair for him, both on site, and in the weighbridge. Julian is great company.

 

 

 

The Usketeers had a heavily loaded wheelbarrow to take up to the tunnel, so maybe Walt in STEVIE would do us a favour?

We waited at the 'bus stop'.

 

Next to us the team from C&M was attending to another sink hole in the platform. What on earth did they use to fill it, back in the day? (1989) 

 

Walt did indeed help us. Here we are, back on site. The fireplace looks quite substantial, but much of this is the back curtain, which is going to rise right up to the roof, to give the adjoining sleepers a straight wall to abut on.

Around us on Wednesday was a crashing and whirring noise - our contractor with a remote control flail, strimming the sides of the cutting. 

(this is a phone picture, hence the halo) 

 

 

 

 

 

Now the contractor has moved above the tunnel mouth, while Paul and Dave start on the corbelling inwards, to form the chimney above the fireplace. 

 

 

 

About 11am a certain need for tea arose, so we sat down on 3 of the 4 chairs that we had. Julian's is waiting - will he get his permit by next week? 

Then we resumed brick laying, using the reclaimed reds from Winchcombe station yard.

We actually have two brick layers on the job. 

From this picture you can see that we have finished the fireplace as such, and are starting on corbelling towards the chimney proper.

We are now quite a way above the arch that we placed last week, and indeed the former was taken away today. (the arch stayed up, in case you ask)

Yours Truly kept himself busy by digging out the area in front of the 'verrandah'.

This had been dug out before, but had succumbed to subsidence. We found a few souvenirs in it; bits of glass bottle, and a valve for a Tilley lamp.

We've been offered a grindstone, which could historically be justified to be placed here. PWay workers would have sharpened their scythes on it.

Near the end of the afternoon Paul was working on the rear curtain wall. You can see how the corbelling is reducing towards the future chimney stack.

A little detail shot to show how the rear curtain wall is being raised, to meet the sides of the sleeper that will stand here.

Then it was time to come home, and we passed the flail, now working on the lower levels.

Next time: The story of how we spotted two GWR lamp posts on TV ! What to do? Can we find them? Where are they? Are they for sale at all?