A cold blow

An (almost) ice cold start today, with one degree showing on the thermometer on arrival at Hayles. Yet two volunteers were already there (at 8.30am!) and sitting in the sun, enjoying an early cup of tea.

Given the low temperature, we decided to delay the start of corbelling for an hour or so.

The planking team got to work immediately, and we see members here, creosoting and cutting the planks to equal lengths.

After a decent while, Minnie the Mixer was fed with sand and cement, which she soon spat out into the wheelbarrow.

For the rest, she behaved herself, and gave us 8 barrows of mortar for corbelling. Well done, Minnie!

Down on the trackbed, Jim gave corbelling lessons, as we felt we needed more working parties on this job, before the real frosts come.

Jim goes into the finer details of the art of corbelling, while Julian and Dave look on, spellbound.

No passing trains today, alas. It normally adds that bit of extra interest.

The southern half of the platform wall was addressed by the planking team today

They laid out the uprights, and measured up the spaces to make up individual bays, each one to be fitted with 4 planks.

Jim made up a spreadsheet which records every stage of the process for each bay, which he numbered.

Lunchtime came all too soon today, and with it an annoying discovery: we have a small rodent guest in the container. We hadn't left any food around, but that made no difference, as it took a fancy to our washing up sponge. Who could have guessed? Now we will have to hide that as well. We plugged the obvious holes; next week we will set a trap baited with peanut butter, which did the job at CRC2.

By popular demand, bacon butties were on the menu again today (Paul gave us options, and this is what we chose) and to add extra interest, each butty was also decorated with a slice of cheese.

The bacon butty judging panel then assembled outside and considered carefully. One panel member was less happy with his 'bacon butty with extra mouse'.

In the afternoon the plank fixing team bridged the gap left for track access, and started on the last southern section. Great progress here. The corbelling, first layer, has reached from the gap all the way to the northern end, but with some courses still to go here and there. Generally we do one course at a time.

The corbelling teams placed quite a challenge on the mortar and brick supply teams, and at one point a former chairman's sports car was in grave danger of possibly receiving a slight scratch from a wonky pallet of bricks. Julian saved the day here, removing each brick with great delicacy, so as not to cause a collapse (a bit like the game of 'pick up sticks').

Paul T was on drilling but later in the afternoon became puzzled when his drill began to run slower, and slower, and even slower.

The generator was checked, but nothing wrong here.

Paul pressed harder, and harder, and even harder, but to no effect. The drill refused to go any deeper.

Finally, the panel of experts now assembled behind him offered the solution: the drill was going round in reverse.
Ah.

Near the end of the day, the platform looked like this. Planks laid out, corbelling going 19 to the dozen at the far end. Great progress today, also made possible by the excellent weather.



Other heritage news

The Hayles Abbey halt reconstruction being led by our Heritage Group, we can report the successful acquisition of a rare GWR yard lamp through a member of the group.

What is a yard lamp then?

GWR cast iron lamp posts came in 3 sizes:

No. 1: 6' 1 1/2'' above ground. For lighting platforms
No. 2: 8' 1 1/2'' above ground. For lighting larger platforms/roads, with ladder bar
No. 3: 13' 6'' above ground, for lighting larger areas, typically railway yards, with ladder, platform and hexagonal top.

Your chances of finding an original one decrease with the size of the post, so we are very lucky to have been offered one for sale, in particular with its ladder still attached, which is quite rare. Below is a drawing of one on the left, and the actual post we acquired, in situ, on the right.

You can see that the post is equipped with its original ladder, but has a non - original top.

A top to the original shape can be obtained from a specialist manufacturer, and we are currently looking into this. It should be much larger and hexagonal, as in the drawing.

A site visit to a private station was made 2 months ago, to ascertain the work required to remove it from its current location, where it had become surplus to requirements.

Then task looked somewhat daunting when a substantial bed of concrete was discovered around the base.

To our delight, the owner felled the post for us, and even took off the concrete jacket. Brilliant!

Here is the post ready for transport.

More headscratchings ensued with the recovery team, as it lay on a lawn, out of reach of the recovery truck we planned to use. This was kindly provided at cost by Paul, a supporter of the railway.

The post weighs half a ton....

It couldn't be rolled because of the platform attached to it.

Once again the kind former owner helped us out, by moving it up to the fence with the help of a friendly JCB driver. This enabled our lorry, equipped with a short HIAB, to reach over the fence and pick it up. Peter and Terry, supported by lorry owner Paul, picked the post up on Saturday. The operation went very smoothly.

What is the most suitable place for a GWR yard lamp on the GWSR? The Toddington loco yard of course! Here the post is being unloaded next to a pair of 28XX boilers, where it will be stripped and repainted.

By lunch time, the operation was complete, and the post up on a pair of blocks ready for treatment. Behind it is the boiler of 2874, recently removed from its frames.

Mark and John of the loco dept. have been most helpful. They have some shotblasting work coming up, and the post can be treated at the same time, which will give it an excellent, rust free future. We also agreed on a representative location for the post:

It will be situated in front of the recently erected water tower, here on the left of the photograph. It will not only look the part, but actually play a useful function, as this area is not currently lit. Services are also nearby, so it all comes together nicely.

We'd like to thank Mark and John of the loco dept for their help, Peter, Terry and Paul for the use of the lorry and help with the recovery, and last but not least, John for extracting it on his own, and moving it to the fence, which removed two big logistical headaches for us. Thank you all!

A frank discussion

It was an amazing day today, 8 degrees to start with, but by noon it was so hot that we had stripped all our layers off and were working in shirt sleeves. It was windstill and sunny, with a wonderful mist under the crest of the Cotswolds edge at the start of the day.

After a brief cup of tea to start the day, it was time to give Minnie the Mixer an oil change:

She gulped down the oil, and, amazingly, behaved impeccably the whole of the day. Mysterious, she keeps us on our toes. But we were grateful for her cooperation, as we mixed a lot of mortar today for the corbelling team.

As the concreting is now basically done (we filled in half a dozen holes remaining at the northern tip) the team involved took out the planks that are being used to simulate the old sleepers, and set about painting them with creosote. It's a sticky job, but at least the weather is on our side.

The plank team started the day as they meant to go on - with a rest.

It's something to do with cutting the planks to size and shape for the slope.

They have to sit there.

With their extra weight, the other half of the team could saw the ends to size.

In this way, everyone is useful.....

After the successful sitting session, the plank is the right length and can be trial fitted.

Afterwards, it is removed again for painting in creosote.

As the northern end of the platform comes down to a point, the planks get shorter and the ends have to be cut to an angle.

Here Neal is fitting one of the uprights to the last of the blocks.

It was such a splendid sunny day that our neighbour came out and mowed his lawn - and we are one day away from November ! It felt like Acacia Avenue in the suburbs; in actual fact our neighbour is an agricultural research station and this patch of grass, carefully leveled, rolled, and planted with a special seed, is trimmed at regular intervals and studied very closely. It does make you want to play cricket though.

Soon it was lunchtime and further jollity ensued.

Things became a little more interesting when Steve joined us (another with a radar for bacon rolls, it would appear) and started a lively and decidedly frank discussion with Paul about a subject we cannot reveal (as in polite company one avoids the subjects of religion, politics and sex).

Protagonist A, Steve, outlines his point of view very firmly.

Protagonist B, Paul, does not agree at all.

Things get a little heated....

The shocked expressions in the background tell you more than we need to say.

Despite the rise in the tone, things remain friendly and if we're honest, very entertaining. You couldn't make it up.

After lunch, the great progress made by the corbelling team became increasingly apparent. Here is Paul raising the third and last row on one of the sections, and at the end of the day, he had done two of these.

This is what it looks like from above. It's going to be the last layer before the platform slabs go on. We're going to have to think about these soon. They are at Winchcombe, need to be brought to Hayles (they are very heavy) and then trimmed to size with a disk cutter.

If you don't know what corbelling is, here is a good example. Each brick sticks out a little further than the one beneath it on which it rests.

This little bit of brick laying can be found in Montefalco, Italy.

We're not going to go quite as far out as that, just three rows.

The brick layers today were Paul, Tim and Jim G.

Jim in his younger years was an apprentice brick layer, but lost his right arm in a motorbike accident (for which he was blameless!). As Jim put it, 'afterwards there wasn't much call for a one - armed brick layer'. Fortunately, Jim then had a successful career with the MOD. But the interesting thing is that he can still lay bricks, and very well too, as the picture shows. With one hand. What is even more astonishing is that, as a full member of the PWay team, Jim can even shovel ballast, with one arm. How people overcome adversity, it's admirable.

Way to go, Jim ! He even cooked lunch for 16 on Saturday. One of the GWSR characters.

At the end of the day, all the woodwork had been completed on exactly one half of the platform wall. Jim and Tim are still laying corbelling bricks, while Paul has stepped back to admire the job well done today.
We have a first row almost all of the way along, a second row some of the way, and all three rows on two of the bays.

No trains passed today. All the activity was north of Toddington, where the hired in tamper started work on the Broadway extension in the Laverton area. During the week, it will slowly work its way north.

More woodwork, and an excursion

The days are getting noticeably shorter now. Cars have their lights on when we drive to Hayles, and at the end of the day the lights go on again. Or are we working long days?

We had a good attendance today, with good progress, although some bribery boosted the size of the gang, just about at lunch time! Amazing. More of that in a moment.

First things first, we need more water. The drawings for tea, mortar and concrete have almost emptied our 1000L container. Tim here rolls out a huge extension pipe to a friendly neighbour's house.

Yours truly was on concrete again, here with Dave on the shovel. Check out the expression, it looks as if he's firing P&O!

Dave was tireless, and personally shovelled out most of two dumpy bags of ballast today. Brilliant.

Minnie the mixer was being temperamental once again, although we did notice that she did it only when we mixed mortar, with the mixer facing west.

When we turned the mixer round to the Cotswolds side to mix ballast, she behaved impeccably. Odd that.

She also stopped twice when somebody walked past, quite on her own. Was she upset by a sideways glance? Spooky....

Then it was Dave's turn on the hernia run. First you haul like mad on the handles of the barrow as you try to control the 100Kg load down the hill, and when you finally make it to the bottom with your dignity still intact, you immediately have a big heaving struggle to get back up to the top of the platform infill. Dave made it this far, but then stalled. Your photographer had to jump in and help push.

On the next run, Dave gave it a bit more welly near the bottom of the descent, but then missed the little plank at the lowest point, whereupon the barrow came to an abrupt stop, shedding a good part of its sloppy load over the front.

Having struggled with the barrow to the top of the infill, the next hernia - heave is to get the load upright, so that it flows out at the front.

This time John is there to help steady, and point for it to go this way and that. Then we use the official poking stick to get the  mix right down into the voids in the blocks.

At the end of the day, this little team had filled all the remaining voids in the platform, so it is now one solid concrete mass. It's not going anywhere now.

Round about this time your blogger had to shoot off and spend £3000 in 3 minutes. Yes, that's the cost of a 6 Dogfish ballast train, and we dropped it at Little Buckland. It only took an hour, then back to Hayles.

At the mention of the scheduled bacon butties due at Hayles today, the 3 man ballasting team, flexible as they were, took a quick decision to have their lunch with us. This boosted our numbers, and they were not allowed to melt away afterwards, but were roped in for concrete and wood fixing duties. It's only fair.

This is what we're talking about. A mug of tea, bacon butty with brown sauce, and a slice of black pudding. Who could resist? A chef's special, brought to you by Monsieur Paul.

It's not exactly Bake Off, but we do have a three man tasting panel. They were very critical, if we may believe their expressions. Tough lot to please, must try harder, Paul. With truffles next week then. Or more ketchup.

With the concreting going on at the southern end of the platform, the others were not sitting on their backsides, but had split into a further two teams.

This one here, led by Jim G, was an interesting one, as it was the start of the corbelling brickwork. After a bit of trial and error, it went really well.

The other team continued with the job of mounting the creosoted planks in front of the block wall.

Now that we've done this a couple of times, we're getting into a practiced routine and quite efficient.

Here we've set out the planks in stacks, and they get drilled through at each end. Jim H, off picture, is applying creosote most diligently, so that the planks are all ready. They're still moist here.

Once equipped with holes, a plank is taken to the wall and wriggled into its place.

We start at the top where the wood meets the underside of the corbelling bricks, and work downwards with the next three planks.

Neal then comes along and, reaching through the holes, drills into the concrete blocks behind.

The next plank down is fitted so that it buts up against the top one.
After holding on to it for ages while the holes are drilled and the bolts inserted, the team found a rather better method for keeping the plank pressed upwards - this clever lever effect, which just requires someone to rest their foot on it.

Peter taps in the bolt, before screwing it in tightly.

Finally, for some planks Neal cuts in a circular opening for the weep holes to be able to discharge any water (although we think that this is unlikely in practice, as we also have a drain in the bottom)

Here's an overview of the activity, taken in the afternoon. Dave and John on the right are filling concrete into the last of the voids at the southern end, while the other two teams are corbelling and fitting planks at the northern end. They've already used up half a pallet of bricks, seen in the centre.

Jim H very kindly spent half an hour repairing the lovely display he had made (and which interested all of the locals we see walking by) as the display had been scraped by a passing tractor. Well, we are in the countryside here, you know. It's what you get.

Here you see the corbelling team at work. They laid two of three rows on two of the sections, and another row on two more. It's an impressive start, but there's more to come in the next few weeks. Hope the weather permits it, corbelling is rather sensitive to the right kind of weather.

Here's the end of the day shot. The woodwork is making great strides forward. It's almost reached the inspection hatch at the far end. This will simply be planked over. If you need to access the pit, you will need to unscrew the planks, a simple job.

There were no passing trains to record today. The class 73 was out ballasting at Little Buckland; more of that tomorrow on the Extension Blog.