Grovelling on hands and knees

Wednesday with the Usketeers

A last hurrah of the summer, with a beautiful sunny and crisp day. How shall we start it?

Not with doughnuts, Paul surprised us with sausage rolls and we were encouraged to 'take'


GO ON, TAKE ONE !!!

one...

We took one, and slurped some tea.



Then Paul seemed quite keen to get going, and we rushed out of the mess coach up to the site of the Usk hut.

We had to tie all those rebars together, the ones we laid in last week. We had made a start, but there was loads to do. Hundreds of little knots, it was very wearing.

Eventually there were 5 of us down that hole, all on our hands and knees and grovelling in the dirt and water that had accumulated after the storms we had these last days.

Jim, with only one useful arm, couldn't help here, so he stood at the side and gave us encouragement.

After a very long time (so it seemed, we even resorted to a coffee break mid-morning to rest our weary knees and backs) we completed the tieing together job. Phew!

Next - Paul and Dave have placed one of the 'S' shaped pieces of rebar that will define the second layer. How high would that be? A mock up was done in the corner, to see if the steelwork would remain within the concrete.

Then came the interesting bit, in which we lift the mat we have created high enough to slip the 200 plastic spacers underneath. Would it work? Would the spacers support the weight, or fold up under the uneven weight distribution as we lift one end?

With the rebar mat suspended 6 inches off the bottom, we reached in and started placing the spacers. It was quite a mathematical puzzle. There are 200 spacers in the bag, and they need to be placed at 1m intervals. How does that look from above?

As we puzzled over the layout, Jonathan brought in further supplies, which he reached in on demand.

Finally all the spacers were in! Another stage achieved. Now to jiggle the mat around to make sure that the sides are all equidistant from the edge. A big crowbar and some wedges helped us centre the construction so far.

The next stage was the placing of the 'S' shaped supports, on which the second layer would rest.

This turned into another puzzle. In principle we had enough for 5 rows, but in practice there seemed to be more, so where to put them?

After 3 of us had been tieing them down for quite a while already, Paul announced that some of them had to move. Arghhh!


Where to move to? Another discussion ensued, and finally we decided to think about it overnight, and resume next week.

Broadway on Monday was pretty much a washout.

We put the third and final coat on the centre span inside roof, sections 1-3 out of 7. It looks quite good from the finished end, less so from the other still to do.

The next stage on these first 3 sections is to paint the supporting steelwork the correct colour. In the above picture it is light stone, and we need to change that to dark. Some rubbing down and treating with a rust removing solution was done, but then it started to rain again quite heavily, and the gang made for home. You can't win every time.






At Winchcombe things were looking a bit more cheerful - if you were a member of the loco crew.

Chris was just dealing with the vacuum hose when a member of the on board kitchen staff brought him two cups of tea and a cheese roll ! How lucky can you get? We wondered if this friendly service might extend as far as the Usk hut next time?

In the carpentry workshop in the C&W shed the guys have been very busy cutting to size the timber for the Broadway footstep sides.

These here have all been cut to length and a drip groove added. There's a chamfer still to go, and many of these have already been completed and placed into storage.

Clearly an impact has been made of the pile of raw timbers, but there is a lot still to go.

Courage, mes braves!

We noticed that the yard to Churchward house, our new office acquisition in Winchcombe, was open and that members of the C&M department were working round the back.

As we knew little about this building, erected with an imposing frontage in Bradstone, we had a little peep round the back.

This is the property from the upper corner, showing that the fine stonework round the front does not extend to the sides and back. It does have air conditioning though, and a decent lockable shed.

This view shows the opposite side, where there is a sort of car port and two containers. A lot of redundant material has already been cleared out from here, and the yard is now looking much more presentable.

A curiosity of this site is this elevated area at the back.

What is less well known is that there is a stream that runs down the edge of the cutting that forms the site of Winchcombe station and yard.

In order to create a greater storage area the stream here has been conduited. The stream flows from top to bottom in the picture, right underneath the darker area.


The higher building just visible at the rear is the industrial unit occupied by our next neighbour, the forklift distributor R.J. Hall.

Due to a closing Ebay auction we had to rush home a little early, thus missing the 'post operative' tea at the Coffeepot, and all the chat that goes with it.

However, the rush back home was worth it, as we managed to secure this early GWR door plate :

This will come in useful on the P2 building at Broadway, or serve as a template for any other 'Private' locations on our GWR railway. You have to think ahead for these things.

Then a final picture of the last steam train south of the day, here headed by Dinmore Manor with a train about to enter Winchcombe, off Chicken Curve.

Usk in the rain

The Uskovites report:

Heavy rain all day....

OK, now this is what we want you to do:

- Get on your hands and knees in this paddling pool
- Make sure there is water in it,
- Fiddle with small bits of wire in the water at the bottom
- Expose your back and neck to the rain from above.

Enjoy!

Here is the scene of the crime, the paddling pool that at some stage we will be turning into the foundation slab for the Usk hut.

About half of it had an inch of water in the bottom, the rest was just wet from the rain yesterday. But we had more rain today, it only stopped for short half an hour long spells, and rained pretty much all day. At least it was still warmish, that is the best that can be said.






Before starting, and in order to allow the initial rain to cease, we had our doughnuts and tea in the mess coach with the others.

But then there for nothing for it, we might as well start.

The job in hand was to lay in the bottom layer of rebar, and tie it down.

In order to spare our knees and to try to keep them dry, we used spot boards from the block laying exercise.

And then it rained again, really hard, wet rain. Eventually we cracked, let's set the clock back to zero, have another cup of tea and see what the weather is like in half an hour.

The five Uskovites huddled together in the mess room kitchen, were they were trapped by John, who had one of his interminably long shaggy dog stories to tell, with a just about mildly funny ending. How we laughed! (it was relief that the end had come)

Usk grate and spare bar

While it was raining we took the grate from the Usk hut to the welding dept of C&W to see if they were willing to remove the three wasted and twisted firebars, and weld in some new ones.

A handy discovery was that the square bar in the grate was the same diameter as left over bits of spearhead fencing, used in Broadway.

The C&W welder said no problem, so we left the grate with him, very happy. What a nice bunch of guys.

While in the C&W building we had a quick look in the carpentry workshop, in the hope that some progress might have been made with the woodwork for the Broadway footbridge steps.

O joy! Eddy had managed to find the time to make a start. Here is a pile of timber that has been sawn to length (there is plenty more though)

In fact Eddy was occupied with a far more interesting piece. Luckily we had the foresight to save examples of the principal timbers used from the HIA bits, and here Eddy is making a copy of one of them. It's quite a complicated piece, with grooves down one side and part of it recessed at an angle.

The original timbers were all pretty good still, except the areas where they had stood or sat on the stringers. Here the stringers had rusted, and the timbers rotted, caused by water getting in between the two.

The original wood was pitch pine, which is very hard to get these days (at least for a price we can afford). The new timber is a lower quality softwood pine.

Re-emerging from the voluminous C&W shed we found the Usk gang on their hands and knees in the water at the bottom of the foundation pit. Now with extra mud, walked in from the sticky clay all around.

4270 was out with one of the two steam hauled trains today.

By lunch time were were pleased to report that the first layer of 40 bars was down, and tied into the surrounding pair of bars around the outside. The window of no rain was closing, so we repaired to the mess coach for our snap.

Of course we weren't the only people out and about, the Wednesday track measuring gang had been to do Toddington station, and in the middle of the day was starting on Winchcombe.

Others were getting training for walking the track patrols.

We started on the second layer, which went at right angles to the first. The second layer went rather more quickly, as there was less setting up and we could see where we were going.

The rain struck again. We tried standing under the oak tree, but after a while the leaves stopped holding back the raindrops and shed them on those underneath in large dollops. We looked round for somewhere else to hide.

The Toad brake was our choice. It wasn't easy to get into, as the running boards were missing. Neil had to abandon the climb, problem of knees (we are not the youngest).

Dave thought it was all a hoot.

By tea time the second layer was in! Doesn't it look neat, a real grid. It looked finished, but in fact quite a bit more work on this lower layer is needed, as we had to secure every other crossing point in the middle.

We decided to have an end of day cup of tea with the others, then returned to the site for a bit more, as it was finally a bit drier. We ended the day by tieing together about a quarter of the crossing points in the floor. With 80 bars crossing each other, we think there are about 400 knots to tie in, given that we only do every other one.

This corner is not yet tied down, but it shows one of the 'chairs' that have been loosely placed in position. They hold up the other, second layer of 80 bars.

The last down rain of the day was hauled by the usual diesel locomotive, today the class 47. The recently arrived Pannier tank should also start running soon, we think from Saturday. Come and see!

We do have a nice, rain free, steam locomotive picture to show you though. It happened on Monday at Broadway.

While we were painting inside the centre span, this little freight train turned up.

Great surprise, this was very unexpected as Mondays are usually traffic free. How nice to see 4270 though, with its short rake of goods wagons. We don't have very many of these, so its good to see some of the ones recently restored by the small C&W wagon gang actually out on a run.

As your blogger is a keen supporter of the GWR 4253 project at Rolvenden, it was very inspiring to see what that sister locomotive might look like one day. Brilliant, standing by the new Broadway footbridge. This big tank is very elegant, it has a certain sort of balance that is very pleasing.





A look over the fence - Bernina railway, CH


A chance to take a trip on the Bernina mountain railway occurred while on holiday at the northern end of lake Como.

Within 2 hours' drive of Malpensa airport the scenery changes from perfectly flat and industrial to this, reachable only by the Bernina railway line.

Alp Gruem station overlooks this.

The Bernina line is part of the Swiss Rhaetische Bahn (RhB) metre gauge system, the steepest adhesion worked line in Europe. The RhB operates almost entirely in the southern Swiss canton of Graubuenden, with an arm reaching just into northern Italy at Tirano. The latter town is about an hour's drive from lake Como, and one of the attractions we noted while planning the hols was a cable car ride up a mountain called the Diavolezza - the She Devil! This could be combined with a trip on the Bernina line, which stops at the cable car base station.

ABe 4/4 iii Nos 55 Diavolezza and 53 Tirano

Confusingly there is also a Bernina Express over the Bernina route, and this has observation cars with a supplement.

However, you can travel the same route on the ordinary passenger train, which runs every hour from Tirano. We liked it better, as it had fully opening windows from which you could look out and admire the train snaking away in front and behind you.



The ordinary trains are pulled by pairs of powerful EMUs, such as the two in the picture. Typically the train has 5 bogie carriages with large picture windows, in which you can sit with no supplement and see the same scenery as in the luxury train.

The departure from Tirano (Italy) is quite interesting, as within a few hundred yards the whole train crosses straight over a roundabout in one of the principal squares of the town! It then follows the main road north out of town, going smartly against the traffic. Such fun, and it all works.

Between Tirano and Alp Gruem.

In the picture the train is high above Tirano, having got there by an impressive series of 'S' bends and spirals. Pull down the window, breathe the mountain air and watch - no £million fines here.

Soon you are way above the valley floor. Tirano at 441m altitude is beyond the end of the valley in the distance, and we are now in Switzerland. The summit of the line is at 2253m, or 7400 feet above sea level. That's more than twice the height of Mt. Snowdon.

All of this is adhesion only, there are no rack sections.

At the Bernina summit there is a large lake, with mountains and glaciers behind. You can see the twin EMUs and the bogie carriages clearly in this shot.

A few minutes after the summit the line starts to descend towards St. Moritz, and in this high, treeless valley they built the base station of the Diavolezza cable car.

The halt for the railway - it's a request stop, you press a button like on a bus - is by the parked cars on the left.

It's a low level platform, and one that seems to have been lengthened at some point, as it carries on beyond a level crossing that goes right through the middle of it. Interesting....

ABe 4/4 ii 46.

As we paused before taking an amusing little travelator in the grass up to the entrance of the cable car, this single EMU came through. It's of a slightly older series, which has been withdrawn but for two service vehicles, one of which is No. 46.

The number system in Switzerland has always seemed a little obscure, but we googled it and came up with the following logical explanation:

AB - First and second class
e     - Electric
4/4  - four axles, of which 4 are powered
ii     - second generation of this series (the unit in the third picture above is from the later iii series)
46   - number of the vehicle.

So now you know.

Diavolezza cable car.

In the picture above the Bernina railway is at the bottom of the valley, and this cable car is on its way to the restaurant at the top, at an altitude of 4000m.  That's almost 4 times the height of Mt. Snowdon! The restaurant overlooks a glacier which twists and turns down a valley. The scenery is bare and treeless.

On the return journey our regular passenger train was hauled by the latest generation EMU, the Allegra series, manufactured by Stadler. This one has come south up the valley from St. Moritz and is about to stop at the Bernina Diavolezza request stop (we hope!)

Allegra EMU No. 3505

Traffic is really busy on this line, with its hourly service on a single track. This passing place is in the middle of nowhere in a forest, half way up a mountain.

The RhB ordered 15 of these Allegra units, which have replaced the earlier EMU generation, such as the single car passing above. A pair of them has 3000 HP, through 12 axles, of which 8 are powered. This makes it an ABe 8/12.

No. 3505 is named Giovanni Segantini, after a local alpine painter.

Further back down the valley we passed older EMU 56, named Corviglia after a summit near St. Moritz.

A fascinating echo from the past can be seen at one or two places along the RhB. These are S&H signal bells, which announced the coming of a train. It's an idea from the 19th century, and they haven't been seen on the (Continental) main line since the 1960s. They contained a clockwork mechanism powered by a weight which ran up and down the leg, and one, sometimes two, two bells on top. It was set off by an electrical signal from a distant hand powered generator, usually from a signal box or stationmaster's office at the next station. It was a system unknown in the UK.

If you want to hear one work, you can see it here on a short clip of one preserved in the SSN's museum steam depot in Rotterdam:

https://youtu.be/tBgdlEOUVnc

These things had to be attended of course, and wound up every day. The one in the video is unusual as it has an indicator showing how high the weight was in the foot, to give an idea if it needed to be wound up again.

Two more of them can be glimpsed in this shot at the intermediate station of Poschiavo, which also has the line's workshops.

The two signal bells are on the right, and there's also a small covered turntable, which wouldn't be able to handle the EMU behind, but was probably good for turning one of the earlier steamers.

On the return journey to Tirano the train ran down the middle of the street in this village, without the slightest hesitation. Cars are requested to hold back until the train has passed.

In case you thought you might just squeeze by, the answer is no, you can't.

You'll just have to wait, it won't take long.

Whether there were any traffic lights here was not immediately visible, but we enjoyed the experience. Trains clearly come first.

Nearer Tirano is one of the line's most remarkable structures, a spiral viaduct. In order to respect the ruling gradient of 7% the line goes right round itself, so that when you lean out of the window you can see where you have been.

https://youtu.be/VUqwBvY3QJY

In the above link you can make the journey down the line, right round the spiral. The spiral is at Brusio and was built in 1908.

Back in Tirano the line cuts across this roundabout. Obviously a picture with a train on it would have been the preferred option, but at the appointed time on the timetable, and after 20 minutes waiting fruitlessly by a cafe and Madame drumming her fingers in the hire car, no train came.

As we didn't want a nascent Diavolezza in the car, we hurried back.

Without the train the traffic gyrates merrily, and what warns them of a train coming down the narrow street centre right is not very obvious. It's a two way street too, but clearly only one way every half hour or so....

We were charmed to find one of these little propeller fitted level crossings round the corner. They must be very rare now, and exclusive to Italy.

On the approach of a train, the bell on top is rung from the inside, and the little propeller whirls round. That should stop anyone!

Eventually the L/C barrier drops down and the train passes.

We filmed one of these in Tuscany a few years back, and in this clip...

https://youtu.be/QMoiV2qZDCg

 ...you can see the influence they have on an Italian driver.