Glorious mud

Monday at Broadway.

First thing, a brighter picture of the new WAY IN sign. It's true, we'd like to widen this canopy, but when to find the time? First we need to finish the footbridge steps, then the P1 canopy extension including its prior manufacture, and then we're on to P2, which also has a canopy and its own extension.

Plenty of food on our plate then.

Broadway entrance in sunnier climes.

All the shaped timber for the sides of the steps has now had 3 coats of preservative, and two of primer, so Neal was finally able to make a start on cutting it to size.

Here we see him with the first piece, starting at the bottom. A great day!

While Neal was starting to measure angles and cut wood, the other two continued with primering the 3 by 3 timbers. It seems endless, but we did get to the end today, and also to the bottom of the gallon pot of primer. Good coordination there.

Neal's 'workshop' was the northern end of the building, in the belief that this would be less windy. But it wasn't, we seem to be going through a North Easterly at the moment. At least the sawdust didn't hang about, it just disappeared in the gusts.

The first timber to be fitted was a tricky one straight away. Neal had to tailor it around the upright supporting the roof, and at the bottom some unkind person had planted a rivet in just the wrong place.

Neal seemed to be expecting this, and had brought a very large diameter drill bit, with which he drilled shallow holes that would take the rivet heads.

After finishing the primer work on the timbers, we got out a large cardboard box, whose contents had been shot blasted an zinc coated a few months ago. These were the handrail brackets, originals from HIA. They had all been carefully unscrewed and left in a plastic bucket somewhere on site.

We counted 36 of them, or 9 per handrail. Looking at the steps though, we reckon we need at least 10, so we'll have to make a few more. Others look surprisingly moth eaten, they must have been those at the bottom of the HIA steps, where there was no roof. Another is bent, so a little more TLC is needed here.

As the sun went down, mid afternoon, Neal was just fitting the second timber, and making sure that the two met perfectly, to minimise any gap for water ingress.

All the timbers will be taken off again, so that we can properly treat the freshly cut ends with preservative and some paint.






Wednesday on the Usk platform.

Low numbers today, as several were on yet another course. A small gang went off to near Hayles Abbey halt to do boxing in of ballast, two went off to return the white Landie from its MOT and overhaul, and just two were on the Usk platform today.

The day started muddy - these two enormous lorries brought stone to the contractor on the river Isbourne, to put into gabions.

They made a mess of the PWay yard and its approaches, there is mud everywhere.

Have we got to lift this? Just the 4 of us?

We then had a customer round to collect the 4 No.1 lamp post castings that he had ordered. They're just under 200Kg each, and can be lifted by 3 fit men, but we didn't have 3 fit men. 3 kind volunteers came to help, and eventually we did manhandle them on to the trailer, which fortunately had a very low bed.

Need a GWR platform lamp post for your railway? Drop a line to breva2011 (at) hotmail.co.uk. All profits go to GWSR plc.

Are you going to behave yourself today?

So just yours truly and Paul on the Usk wall today. We got Maxie out and placed her on the throne, and after quite a few pulls on the cord - more than usual - she eventually muttered into life.

Paul showed us a wrinkle today used by bricklayers - a dash of washing up liquid in the water makes for a very creamy mix. It had to be dry too, as the blues we are using do not absorb any water at all.

The job today was to put up a tower round the end of the platform, including on that extra bit of concrete at the back that we laid last week.

This is as high as Paul could go, as otherwise the bricks will start to slide around.

We liked the wall, it's going to look great. Rain came after lunch and it soon got dark, so that was about it for today.

We had some hot Cornish Pasties for the team for lunch, a great treat. And the visit of our new director responsible for the PWay - coincidence, or not? They must have a nose for it.

Helping to churn the mudbath was this dumper, which the contractor on the Isbourne is using to ferry the stone down to the gabions at the edge of the river.

After the rain and high winds we've had, the already deeply rutted path to the site is now filled with water, with the dumper rocking, swaying and splashing its way along.

Here's a peep over the works, taken from the start of Chicken Curve. The right hand side looks done, lined with the gabions, and the left hand side is now being addressed.

The upstream end on the other side of the embankment - through the little tunnel - is also going to be done.

Finally we took the remains of the smaller Usk building window to a volunteer joiner, who will make a new one (or rather two new ones; we have the third, big one) in his spare time. It's not a big deal if you have the skills, but it's still very kind to offer to help.

This is the window in question. All the windows rotted, having been made of softwood 150 years ago. The big window on the left side, which allowed the weighbridge operator a good look over the weighbridge table, had completely collapsed, helped along by a rotten softwood lintel and a French lorry that reversed into it while turning to buy something from the burger van opposite.

                                             *************** - ***************

A late submission by John M shows the small gang out along the track today, boxing in south of Hayles Abbey halt:

Beautiful countryside, fresh air and sunshine, why not come and join us?

Getting Christmassy

Friday at Broadway.

And just Friday. That's yer lot, this time. No PWay work on Saturday, it's the start of the Christmas season and that means Christmas dinners! Or training sessions on the Pway, where a further 8 are being taught lookout duties.

It was a grim day at Broadway today. Although our stuff was under the canopy, everything was nonetheless wet, from spray with the high winds.

At one point you could barely see the end of the line, it was raining so hard.

No matter though, because we already had a kind of indoor job in mind, which was to pick up the door for the Usk weighbridge hut from our friendly joiner at Willersey.

In the picture you can see that he has made it a completely new frame, using reclaimed wood at the top, and new wood down the sides.

At some stage the door needs rubbing down and the frame needs the application of several layers of preservative, but there is probably no hurry as we won't be starting the build until the frost is over.

In return we took the large replacement window up, for a similar but smaller repair to a corner of the frame.

Back at Broadway station around lunch time, we found the tower scaffold erected outside the front door. What's going on here then?

Oh, right, they're going to (finally) put up the WAY IN sign that we made a few months back.

The double V board is all new, manufactured in house, the BOOKING OFFICE letters are from a smaller V board that we bought but used only the letters, and the WAY IN and & are new castings in aluminium, using some WAY OUT originals that we had. The metal work for the suspension was made in house again, and so we have a new board that suits our particular purposes.

The new V board was opened out and offered up to the front door, where the ends were attached to the wall, and the nose was suspended from the canopy.


























While John and Neal were fiddling with the hanging of the V board, another volunteer 'planted' a GWR boundary post at the point where the two drives part company. Some grass seed was mixed in, so that this area should be weed free in the spring. The post adds a bit of colour.

The boundary post was donated by the RAT Railway Archiving Trust. It is an unusual angular design. Most GWR boundary posts were in the form of an old medallion type roundel on top of a length of bridge rail. This style looks more modern, can anyone say something more about it?

After the fierce downpour we were treated to after lunch, we had 10 minutes with this shaft of sunlight illuminating the otherwise deserted station.

We had a little poke round the station to see if there were any other interesting sunset pictures possible.

By putting the lamp post in front of the orb of the sun, you get the lovely orange glow in the glass of the lamp top. The platforms were wet, with large puddles, and these too reflected the orange sunlight.

Turning the other way....

...you get this amazing orange glow on the station building. It lasted just a few moments.

Step back, and admire the 'light and dark stone'. Now light and dark orange.

And then the sun was gone. It was cold and windy again, and getting dark too, Neal and John finished hanging the V board, so now passengers will know where the way in is. Apparently, some do not know this, hence the board. The old station didn't have such a board, as the entrance was round the side and on to the platform.

Two WAY OUT signs, with a pointing finger, are next on the 'to do' list. We already have the letters - and the finger !

No Saturday report then, due to other activities. Reporting looks likely to be a bit intermittent over the Christmas period.

76077 AGM

Monday at Broadway

An ice cold start on Monday, and although the painting job was under cover outside the station building, there was a nasty little wind that gave us all a chill factor. We stopped every 30 minutes to warm up our cold and stiff fingers in the mess hut.

During the day we gave this pile of timber for the footbridge sides a first coat of primer. It's already been knotted, and had three coats of preservative put on it too.

Soon Neal will start using it for the sides of the steps. He will start on the P1 side, at the bottom, and work up.

Neal once again was a lonely figure on the P2 side, where he slowly worked his way down the steps, fixing on the treads, after drilling in new holes on each timber and reaming out the top so that the bolts can be countersunk. Slow and steady, he was on step No. 10 out of the 28 on this side here.

As the sun went down half way through the afternoon we were so cold that thoughts turned to some warmer activity, so it was decided to move the remaining wooden treads, mostly spares, from a pile on the grass to inside the P2 tower. That will look neater, and there is a limited amount of shelter there too.

The Broadway gang also did physical stuff to keep warm, such as digging soil along the drive, sweeping leaves along the platform, and this team here, which was sweeping up the needles along the track through the platforms.

The Broadway gang also assembled the bench ends we bought at auction a while back. The whole kit is there now, so with the help of the stainless steel nuts and bolts the bench was put together. Now it just needs a couple more coats of paint to complete the job.

These bench ends are originals, and a bit scarce, as they have pierced backs, as you can see in the pictures. All the others we have are solid in that area.




Standard 76077 AGM

Saturday saw the first ever AGM of the new company that will see through the completion of this attractive and most useful engine for our railway. We met in Toddington village hall.

This is the company board, the people who are going to see the restoration through, with our support. They're all GWSR volunteers.

Andy Meredith, our Engineering Director (centre), gave an overview of where we are with the locomotive at this stage. The loco is 95% complete (not counting the missing tender) and in relatively good condition too, as of course it was one of the newer locos at Barry. The condition of the boiler is very good, although as all second hand boilers it will need work doing to it. The loco will initially be restored without the tender, and we hope to run with a borrowed one until further funds have been raised to pay for a new one. We already have many parts for a new tender frame.

The principal items missing are the reverser box and screw. If you know of one.... get in touch! We had a newly manufactured smokebox door at Toddington, but after hunting round the yard we were unable to find it, so we will need a sponsor for a replacement. If anyone knows where it is then we would love to know.

The frames were shotblasted at Toddington and have been sent to Loughborough to Locomotive Maintenance Services (LMS), who just outshopped Pitchford Hall. As a result, our frames have now been taken indoors for the restoration to start. We have enough shareholder funds for the first year's work. This will include the manufacture of a new front bufferbeam (damaged in a collision), a new dragbox, re-wheeling and a cab. By the end of next year then the frames should see the smokebox at one end, and the cab at the other, with a big gap in the middle. This is for the boiler, and for that we need further financial support.

Standard 76077 behind the Toddington goods shed (where the new mess room is now being built) shortly after arrival on the GWSR.

Now we need your help. Many, but not yet enough, people have purchased a block of 500 £1 shares, and this will see us through the first year. Please consider helping us, we can't do it on our own. If you can afford a block of £500 shares that would be great. What would really help is to have an income stream of say £25 a month. We can plan with that, know what we can afford. If you set up a standing order and fill in the share application form, you will slowly accumulate a growing block of shares, converted to an annual certificate, but with a modest monthly outlay.

Share application form

Standing order form

These two links will take you to the share application form. On the form you can opt for either a single purchase of shares (minimum £500) or an ongoing purchase of shares in £25 increments. Yours truly purchased his block in the summer, and now feels he can afford £25 per month, so signed up for the standing order. Could you do that too? Let's get this loco back up and running, it's ideal for the GWSR and we are all GWSR members - it's going to be our engine.




Wednesday Usketeers

It was a bright morning, but also ice cold. Paul broke out the seasonal mince pies, and you can gauge the temperature in the mess coach by the steam coming off the tea. It's a seasonal picture for you.

You had to be quick to get a mince pie though.

8 of us were off on a course, one of many we now have to undergo.

Others sorted out a delivery of lifter fishplates with the Telehandler, while more went to Hayles to start ballast boxing south towards the team that is working north from Chicken curve. They should meet half way down the Defford straight then.

It was difficult getting into Winchcombe yard today, not only because of the increasingly heavy traffic. An Alleleys low loader was waiting at the top of station drive, unable to enter because of residents' cars parked at the top of the road. This despite the double yellow lines.

The purpose of the low loader was to pick up Foremarke Hall for a trip to Tyseley for a repair job. This is cheaper than having the Tyseley team come down to us over several days.

The unloading road at Toddington is currently blocked with the scaffolding for the mess room extension, so the pick up today was from Winchcombe.

Here the loco is being brought in by the class 73.

Clearly some thought had gone into this manoeuvre, because by propelling the loco down from Toddington, the class 73 was in the right position to push it up against the trailer.

Here they are just passing the C&W extension, with the trailer parked just out of sight to the left.

After a reversal by the stop block, the class 73 was once again able to propel the loco past the pit and up to the end of the trailer.

There the class 73 was unhooked (just as well....) and from that point on the loco was slowly winched on board with a cable.

A careful eye was kept on the point where the loco's wheels left the rails.

With the two changes of angle from track to slope and then the top of the trailer, the frames of the locos are subjected to some stress, as you can see in this picture. However, all went well.

While Foremarke Hall was being secured to the trailer, the Usk team took to splitting engineering blues int two, so that we could build the wall with an English bond (or apparently so, as the skin is actually only one brick deep.)

Eventually we had a team of three doing this (Jules is at the rear, collecting a further supply) while Paul gave us a brief 'acte de presence'. In fact Paul was away for most of the morning on an urgent shopping trip, and was unable to contribute to the build today, leaving only instructions to divide a lot of bricks in two.

We have all sorts of bricks from many different sources, and here is one with a clear source cast into the inside. It's a fairly local company. If you have a brick with an inscription and want to know what it means, you can look it up here:
http://www.brocross.com/Bricks/Penmorfa/Pages/england15a.htm

It's a jolly useful reference site. Scroll down, and it says this about our brick:

Mobberley & Perry was at The Hayes, Lye, Stourbridge, West Midlands.  The brickworks for building bricks was on the main Stourbridge Road in Wollacote and the Firebrick works was in Hayes Lane.  George Attwood worked the brickworks untill 1840, then Fisher Bros. worked the brickworks until Mobberley & Perry took over the brickworks, the works closed in the late 1960's.

Of course we had our own brickworks at Greet, just down the lane from the station in fact. That pit produced the clay for some of the archway specials we found at Broadway - they had a 'W' cast into them. The GWR didn't go far for these to build our line then.

One construction job we could do today was to extend the foundations of the brick skin a few feet round the back of the platform end. This is to avoid showing concrete blocks exposed by the slope of the terrain at the back.

Neil is seen digging here.

In a spare moment, Jules decided to sweep the millions of leaves off our foundations. Whose Idea was it to build right underneath an oak tree anyway?

Concrete in at the end of the day.

Santa, stop here to let our happy children off.

Once Foremarke Hall was safely secured to the trailer, the tractor turned around, coupled back on to the end from which the loco was loaded, and then slowly reversed back out of the yard.

What a blessing it is that we now have a concrete roadway for the larger part of it.

Here is Foremarke Hall being propelled past the signal box. The man in orange is in charge of steering the rear wheels of the trailer, with a remote control box in his hand.

A tricky zig-zag was required at the yard gate, in view of cars parked just outside.

But that was not a big thing, again with the rear wheel steering the combination skipped neatly around the obstruction.

As with the approach by the lorry first thing, the throat of the yard was the problem area again. To straighten out the 'S' bend by the gate post (this used to divide the goods yard from the passenger forecourt, and had a lamp post beside it) the second gate was opened, something we don't see that often.

Another car was parked awkwardly in the road, this time outside the B&B.

Double yellow lines are apparent here too, but to no avail.

The last photograph, a little unsharp due to the digital zoom, shows the loco being taken across the railway bridge on the Greet road.

She'll be back again soon.