Buffer stop - go.

What a superb day today! Auntie Beeb said it would be 'unseasonably hot', a slight exaggeration, but it drew 18 volunteers and we worked out under a balmy sky.

We had 3 teams out today.

- Team 1 spent the day at Laverton , working south on track defects such as missing clips or pads on the extension,
- Team 2 spent the day in the yard at Winchcombe with the Telehandler, moving stored material to one side so that the siding to be moved could be accessed by our contractor Stevie
- Team 3 continued work on moving the siding, and in particular the stop block, buried deep in mud at the end.

Now this is what you want to do, see?

Even before we arrived, Steve had already put some time in and dug out the stop block, as well as a space next to it, to where it could be moved.




Here is the stop block, dug out and part moved across.
We had to go across the road to C&M dept to borrow a long piece of string - a line in their parlance, a long piece of string in ours - to work out the location and attitude of the stop block in its new location.

Steve then moved it some more, but there were worrying creaks and cracks from within it (it turned out that two chairs had snapped) and there were doubts about its height.

The answer to how high was this level. We only had an optical one, not the nice new, self levelling laser model. Unfortunately you can only set it up either for a short person, or a very tall one....

With this level we sorted out the height of the stop block. By digging out a few inches more, it was level with the stub of rail where the slew was going to start. For information, we ascertained that the adjoining pile of clay and rubble where the new platform will be is almost the correct height already, just 4 ins out. That's handy.

At the end of the morning, after much debate and a final ruling by the people who will build the new wall, the stop block was in position, facing the right way, and level.

Steve could only give us the morning, but he did find the time to lift out this third panel. It was made up out of scrap rail laid about 30 years ago.

One rail clearly came from an old turnout, as it still had some cast iron pieces attached to it.

Once the rail  as out, Steve scraped together all the sleepers underneath, which were almost all rotten. One was still sound; we earmarked that one for later.

Here he is with the backhoe, scooping up the rotten sleepers.

The site then had 3 panels (of odd rails) out, and a fourth one will stay in situ but will be 'tweaked' across by Steve in the next few days.

He will also dig out the trackbed, and spread out a layer of spent ballast. The renewed siding can then be laid on it, which is an improvement on the previous foundation of clay.

In the afternoon the gang returned. The Telehandler was used to clear the trackbed of the remaining debris of the lifted third panel.

Looking over the area of the siding from the brake van we pulled forward last week, you can see how the original siding curved right and bit into the area where the platform wall will be built.

You can just make out the stop block in its new position, approximately in front of the lamp hut in the distance. The transition to the new siding location will start where the shovel has been put into the ground, and go in a straight line from there.

You can see how this small move gives the area by the big yellow shed so much more space. Would  the Usk building fit in there now?

With a bit of time to spare in the afternoon, we also decided to overhaul the bottom of the stop block, where 3 chairs had snapped, a number of Mills keys were found out of place, and one sleeper was rotten.

Here Martin is using the nut runner to release the chair screws from the failed sleeper, located a bit awkwardly right under the cross beam.

After digging out the loose clay remaining from the shove from the JCB, we slipped in a good second hand sleeper from the lifted third panel. That went very smoothly, and soon Martin was tightening the chair screws again.

We also scraped all the clay off the stop block, which is a rather nice example and in pretty good condition. It could do with a coat of red oxide now... and some black to finish.

In this view you can see the location of the hole with the stop block in it, and a train just pulling out of Winchcombe. 2807 was doing the honours today, together with the DMU, and we were pleased to see plenty of noses pressed against windows. What are they up to down there???

The last sleeper in question had a broken cast iron chair with a very old break in it. We took a replacement from the scrap pile.

At the end of the day the stop block was relatively clean, and in much better condition. It has been successfully moved across, points in the correct direction and sits at the right height. Success!
(or Big Success! as Borat would say)

The hot day made us thirsty, so why not patronise your own cafe at the other end of the platform?

Tea and a licky ice made a great end to a satisfying day. We get to watch trains too, as 2807 rumbled in for a final trip down south.

To finish with, here is a last view of the slewed stop block, and the cleared siding area where we will effect the relay next week, once Steve has prepared the ground for us. Simples!

Post Scriptum:


A couple of early morning pictures have come in, taken by Jonathan while the others were munching their doughnuts and drinking tea for Britain:

Steve has started digging out the stop block here. You can see how deep it sat in the clay.

The stop block first thing this morning, with quite a bit of clay dug out, but still plenty more to come.

Thanks, Jonathan !

Usk work starts at Winchcombe

Day one of work to rebuild the Usk weighbridge hut at Winchcombe. This coincided with the return of your blogger from the wilds of Sicily, so you get a report again. Welcome back !

Where were we?

Well, all the material recovered from Usk has now been brought to Winchcombe, so there are shrink wrapped pallets standing about the yard.

The whole site around the oak tree will be made fit for visitors to see, reachable off the end of P2. At the moment the site is a bit of a tip. The steels from a mezzanine floor have already been removed, and Stevie has levelled off the site as well as he could already, so we can see where we are.

The idea is to have a demonstration goods area here, with a few interesting wagons, and the Usk building rebuilt, say as a coal or goods office, with some barrows and old barrels scattered about.
To make the area level and to give it shape, we will build a short platform to the left of the TOAD. However, the way the siding was laid is not ideal, so we are going to straighten it a bit by moving the end to the right. This will give more room on the left.

Here's the left hand side, all rubble falling into the siding tracks. 
We may be looking for a supply of engineering imperial blues, so if you have any suggestions, do say. (the excesses left at Broadway have been sold)

Next to the planned removal of the siding, we also had a PWay gang out at Laverton on fault fixing (mostly loose clips), and to start with we all had a good sniff round our new arrival, a second Landie 110. Our budget was small and we looked for a vehicle that 'needed a bit of work doing to it' and this is exactly what we got. It has a year's MOT, but there are several little niggles to sort out. Luckily, we have some Landie skills in house, one of the reasons we went for another of the same type.

This one doesn't have rail wheels, but it does have a stereo system! It still needs testing....

One of the niggles was a couple of leaking hoses, which are here being fixed by Jonathan. Jonathan had a very impressive box of jubilee clips, and it was just what we needed. Now don't get any dirt on your always immaculate workwear, Jonathan!

Alan can see that there is a high chance that some of the engine dirt will do exactly that.

 

The siding is currently occupied by 3 wagons and the parked up Jacker Packer. It hasn't been used for several months, so we could only get it to cough, but not run. We also found that its battery was smaller than the box intended for it.

Further along, Rick and Peter had a go at revealing the fishplates buried in the clay that covers everything but the top surface of the rails.

We're still running trains of course, although we are now in the low season - P&O and the DMU today. Still many faces at the windows, as far as we could see, which is good.

Eventually we managed to shunt out the 3 wagons, and we parked the Jacker Packer back up against the little 'train'. Note the JP was not the engine! It's just parked there. But the space behind is now clear enough to work on.

Looking backwards from the platform of the TOAD, this is what you can see of the siding that we will shift. It's very ropey, not ballasted, and made up out of all the odds and ends you would put in a siding in those heady days of the 1990s.

On the right some of the material from Usk. It's not absolutely clear to your reviewer where the building is going to go, this side or that of the oak tree, but let's say in its general vicinity.

Dave then made a start on knocking out the keys, which were often buried in building rubble. This area has been a tip for years.

He also got out the nut runner, and to our amazement most of the rusted on nuts actually came off. Only two had to be cut.
Note there is no fish plate behind him; this siding is made up out of odd bits of rail and it may well be that we will find something longer and better in our scrap pile this time, when we put it all back together.

The first (short) length of rail tipped out easily. The second one was longer and wouldn't.

Some levering, packing and lifting did the trick, and then three of us were able to tip it out of its beds.

Towards the end of the morning we were quite pleased to see that we had done about half of it - the train was moved, the nuts came off, the rail was freed, and here Martin is lifting out the first length to put it on one side. The slew to the right of the whole siding should gently start somewhere near the chap in the distance.

At the end of the morning the first two panels were pretty much dismantled. That's enough for us to charter in Stevie next Wednesday to lift out the rest (buried....) and dig out the site for a bed of ballast (and not clay as before).

More was done in the afternoon, but your blogger responded to an invitation from the CPRE at Highnam to attend this year's awards ceremony. Why was not perfectly clear, but it sounded exciting.

In fact the Campaign to Protect Rural England does not hold a competition as such, there are no winners, but it does make annual awards to small projects with a rural interest that have particular merit. This year there were 6, as you can see from the board above.

We saw to our delight that one of these was the rebuild of Hayles Abbey halt. Hence the invitation then.

Three of us were there to receive a framed certificate for the railway, as well as a circular plaque, which we will attach to the inside of the corrugated iron shelter, a fairly discreet place, but one that people will see.

In the picture Glyn, chairman of our Trust which funded the rebuild, is giving a short acceptance speech for the framed certificate.

Here's our certificate and plaque. We are all very proud of it.

Of course that was June 2017, and we are already well into the next heritage project, so who knows what recognition that might bring...

Day 7 at Usk

And there it was - gone!

Today was the day we finished the demolition (I say, shouldn't that be dismantling?) of the weighbridge hut at Usk. In only 7 working days too, we are veritable demons.

So what do you think of it so far? Hmmm.... these English doughnuts are not as good as the Welsh ones last week, was our considered opinion.
The best bit of the day is always the meet in the morning, with coffee and Paul's doughnuts from Tewksbury.

Then, invigorated, we all spring into life and take on a job of our own.

The walls are nearly down to the ground, but there are two courses below ground still, after the building was backfilled against at some time in its history.

Clive had a concentrated go at the NE corner, which he dug out to prove that there were still dressed stones below the current ground level. At some time, this was above ground, near the bottom of the building.

A different team was busy with the corner where the fireplace was. This is a big lump of rubble and mortar. Under it all was the grate. Eventually this appeared, and here Jules was able to extract the grate itself.

Here Jim has the grate. We decided to call him Alfred. Alfred the Grate - geddit? Made him laugh though.

After Clive's concentrated digging at the NE corner did indeed reveal more dressed stone below ground, Paul took an interest and decided to hammer and chisel away at the first block to try and wriggle it out.

The others were looking at the weighbridge mechanism. We took away the cast iron column, but there was more underneath. But what exactly? We were expecting a sort of inspection tunnel from the column to the underside of the weighing plate. Outside the walls of the building we uncovered an area covered by 4 ft rails (bullhead) and by removing those we saw the tunnel.

Meanwhile, there was a mewing in the yard. It was Tibby, the yard cat.

What is wrong with Tibby the yard cat? She hopped off back to her enclosure, didn't like us to stroke her.

Clive pressed on with his dig, driving on towards the corner of the building.

He was revealing some lovely dressed stonework, once underground.

Dave got out the big SDS drill and tried to meet him from the other side.

The team in the middle - we had several teams, there were nine (!) of us today - took out the floor slabs in the middle of the building. They were made of red sandstone.

The one in the picture is a good one, but several were already smashed into several pieces, so we left those, as transport is at a premium.

Paul had a bit of a bother getting this slab out of the centre of the building, and welcomed the assistance of a 'banker' (the Lickey incline type, not the nasty, money grabbing type, two of which sadly inhabit the team).

The floor slabs were mostly 3 inch thick stone, and this one had a bit of history underneath it - a stone mason's mark. You owe me whole shilling for this, boss!

We prised these slabs out with our shovels.

Once the centre was clear, we used the area to deposit the mortar and small rubble we were digging out.

The tunnel to the weighing table was slowly opened out.

Here is a view down into it.

We were surprised to see that the tunnel was built of concrete, not a 1853 material. It reinforces our feeling that the building was upgraded at some point, say about 1900, possibly with a bigger mechanism, as the surface area of the weighing table was surprisingly large.

In the middle of the tunnel was a cast iron balancing beam.

At the table end of the tunnel was this cast iron construction.

Note that it has been filled in already from the road end.

We only saw the middle bit; there was nothing more we could save from it. The table plate was already taken some time ago.

Lunch. Seven of the nine of us availed ourselves of the burger van man's delicious burger / bacon roll and chips.

Sadly, after several weeks on site, we have developed an us and them mentality. This is now the 'executive dining room'.

Us workers balanced our fragile bottoms on rough crates of Raglan stones on the works site. How we wished for promotion to the executive table, but it was not to be.

Soon it was back to work. And not with a small job either.

Paul wanted us to move the heavy cill from the front window to a better site for loading next week.

It took 6 of us. There seems to be a vacant place on the corner. Come on, blogger! Roll your sleeves up and get stuck in.

Eventually the buried dressed stone and corner quoins were released from their underground hiding place, and propelled to a stillage a few yards away.

They were heavy enough to need the services of a wheelbarrow, with an extra engine on the front.

From the top of the tunnel we released no fewer than 6 old bullhead rails, worth £10-£15 each in scrap.

The web of the rails seems to have attracted quite a few large spiders, bigger than we have seen before. (Don't look now if you don't like spiders)

This one ran up to Paul's boot.

It didn't seem to be frightened at all, it got closer to Paul's boot still.

Then it climbed on top!

We can assure you that this photograph was taken in the micro-second between the spider climbing on Paul's boot, and Paul doing a large leap into the air.....

Meanwhile, Jules had exposed the edge of the original weighing table in front of the building.

This edge is in fact a large cast iron square, which forms a hard border all the way round the original weighing table. But this has gone, apparently removed some considerable time ago, before the current owner had the site (and he has been there for a long time).

Also, the original weighing table, with the plate removed, was filled in and tarmacced over. So other than the fancy edge there isn't much to be recovered. We filled the tunnel in.

What was visible of the tunnel before filling it in.

This long cast iron bar must have been attached to something at each end, but as both ends were filled in, we couldn't see what.

So what we are taking home from the mechanism is just the operating column inside the building, shown earlier.

Near the end of the day, this is what the site looked like. More wooden stillages filled, we reckon another two lorry's worth. Quite a lot of scrap wood, rotten and woodwormed. We are taking home one truss as a sample, and will replace with new.

Having taken out the fire grate and surrounding brickwork, we were left with the hearth underneath.

That would be nice to recover, so Dave had a go with the ole SDS drill here.

Unfortunately it too was split into several pieces, so not worth taking.

The last stone, removed from the hearth with considerable difficulty.

At the end of the day, all useful and reasonably accessible stones had been recovered. Nothing remained above ground. The whole building had been taken down to floor level, and even the floor removed.

An end of job picture of the proud team. If you're not on it, well ya shoulda been there. Or taken the picture.


And now...

Just two more pictures of interest for the amateur archaeologist:

Firstly, this picture of the door and it's frame, which we are taking back. We thought the woodwork of the weighbridge hut was painted GWR chocolate, but of course that reflects only one period.

If you look carefully here, you will see two coats of brown and underneath that, two coats of light and dark stone. So that was the original colour scheme!

Secondly, this concrete base with a few ground off angles in the corner. It's behind the GWR goods shed, which is also on site. Note the little hole in the middle of the base for the middle of the double doors.

This is in fact the concrete base of the corrugated iron hut retrieved from Usk, taken to a member's garden at Toddington, and then installed as a perfect replacement of the waiting room shelter at Hayles Abbey halt.

So this is where it stood at Usk!

Transport:

Our local member Mike was kind enough to volunteer to accompany the second load from Usk to Winchcombe today. It was loaded yesterday afternoon, 11 pallets and stillages in all.

Here is the lorry at it's base in usk, first thing this morning. They have early starts, these lorry drivers.

Driving down from Toddington to Usk, we met the lorry going the other way at Ashchurch. It had almost arrived, not long after we left home.

Soon after the lorry arrived at Winchcombe with this, the second load from Usk.

Here it is stopped on the PWay sidings at the back of the yard.

Stevie was good enough to drop in and unload all the pallets with the company Telehandler.

Two more loads to go!

Plucky Mike agreed to accompany the lorry from Usk to Winchcombe and back, in time for lunch.

What the lorry driver failed to mention though was that he was also going to Yate, and then to Hereford, before returning to Usk. By that time we had finished, and Mike was rather weary after a mystery tour of the West Midlands.




What, where?

There's been a lot of discussion about the exact layout of the new 'Goods Area' of the site, and the final location of the Usk weighbridge hut, soon to be a 'Goods Office'.

Last week Steve cleared the whole site and just about levelled it.

Here is a site inspection team discussing what we need to do with it.

The whole area around the oak tree, currently a waste ground, will be made available to visitors, who will be able to get to it from the end of platform 2.

As you can see the two sidings here diverge from each other. It makes the area behind rather cramped. It was agreed that the siding with the Toad on it be straightened over a stretch of 50-60m. After that, a short goods platform will be built here, which will give the stored goods wagons a purpose. At the same time it will give an area for the Usk stone building to stand on.

The Usk building can be given signage such as Coal Office or Goods Office, surrounded by some barrels, boxes and carts for atmosphere.

So the Usketeers have completely removed the stone building in the goods yard at Usk. A professional job, if we may dare to say. Fifty tons of stone removed and packed in seven days, how's that!

Two of us are now off on our first holiday of 2018, so excuse us if there is a bit of quiet on the blog until the first week in October. In the meantime another expedition will take place to tidy the site, and also to ship the last two lorry loads. You'll have to wait a bit to read about it. Go find a book or something.

Ciao !