An offer you can't refuse

The railway received a very generous offer from a junior school in Tewkesbury for some free concrete slabs, providing we picked them up immediately. An offer we couldn't refuse! You never know when you might need slabs or bricks - certainly Broadway P2 when it is completed will need lots of 3 x 2 slabs under the canopy.

Just in time the blue Transit came back from having new brake linings fitted, and three volunteers jumped aboard and whizzed off to Tewkesbury. In the picture we see Pete, Phil and Jim M just leaving, while Jim H followed in his car.

Useless fact: how do you know you are sitting in the C&M Transit? The bottle holder is full of 6 inch nails....

At the school the Transit team was met by Mike and Bob Mac, himself a Tewkesbury resident. Could there be a connection?

50 slabs were heaved on to the truck, whereupon it returned to Winchcombe where this first load was stacked on pallets.

The Transit then returned to Tewksbury another two times, resulting in this most useful stack of 150 slabs at Winchcombe.

We're also on the lookout for imperial blues, should there be any out there that we could have. We need them for the goods platform that is about to be built by the oak tree siding in the Malvern side of the yard.

John, Martyn and Peter K spent the day in the Winchcombe visitor centre fitting 12 acoustic panels to the ceiling.  This was slow at first as setting them out to follow Pete's plan wasn't easy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the end of the day they were up though. Just got to hoover the floor to suck up all the little bits that fell down from above.

Now let's hope that the panels work.

 

 

 

Mike did some more railing painting, but we haven't got a picture of that as our photographer was in Tewkesbury loading slabs. Well, he can't be in two places at once.

 

A quick catch up from last week too, when Pete, John and Jim H went to Cheltenham.

As the Heras fencing there got blown down in the storm we had, the team had to rebuild it completely. They then had another go at the holes they are digging through a very hard ground for the cast iron gate posts that are intended to be erected there. You seem them digging away here in the picture above.

Picture of.... a hole.

They got the second steel post out, but it fought them all the way.

They spent ages too in further enlarging the first hole.

There is at least another 6 inches of concrete to come out of the hole where the second post was, before it can be used again for the cast iron one. They'll get there, bit by bit though. Persistence does pay.

 

 

Spearhead and gates

A brief update of work yesterday; brief due to a meeting during the morning.

Nonetheless we have some interesting photographs for you of spearhead fencing about to go in at the north end of CRC.

Five panels have been newly manufactured by a volunteer and were delivered on Wednesday. In the picture they are on a pallet as unloaded, but lying down like this painting wasn't possible.

As the PWay gang as working in the yard across the tracks they were asked if they would stand the panels upright with the Telehandler.

This they did, so that painting could start.

The 5 panels had to be manoeuvered around a bit during painting, and this confirmed just how heavy they are. These panels are taller than the usual spearhead fencing seen along platforms.

To go with the spearhead fencing panels a new set of gates was also manufactured by the same volunteer. This was made possible by the experience gained from making our own panels for Broadway.

The gates are even heavier than the plain fencing panels! At the end of the day they had been turned, so that both sides are now in white primer.

The new spearhead gate posts will be hung from the cast iron gate posts removed from the drive at Broadway.

A picture from the past - Here are the same gate posts still in situ at Broadway. The wooden gates were cut down and used by the visitor centre at Winchcombe.

In the C&M shed at Winchcombe the running in board is getting a refurb and it is seen here at the back, waiting for new 12 inch letters. These will be in cast Aluminium as pioneered by Broadway, replacing previously used plywood which soon delaminated.

In the foreground is one of two panels for a new modesty screen to be installed by the gents toilet at CRC. By the end of the day one had been painted in gloss brown.

Cheltenham posts

The C&M team was working at Cheltenham Race Course, as well as on the short carriage shed extension at Winchcombe.






At Cheltenham, the plan is to erect some recovered spearhead fencing and a pair of newly made replica gates at the southern end of P1. Here the first hole is being dug.

These gates will be hung on the original cast iron station approach gate posts, taken away from Broadway.

The cast iron gate posts are away being repaired, as one was found to have snapped below ground level when it was dug out with the mini digger at Broadway.

Hence new post holes are being dug at CRC, to provide a pair of gates for the disabled access in heritage style.

The job of digging out the old gate post - a modern galvanised example - was pretty arduous, as it was bedded in concrete to quite a depth.







You can see the northern access to P1 here in the background, and in the foreground an SDS drill is being used to break out the concrete, which is about 2ft deep.

A gang of 3 (Jim H, Jim M and Phil) went there to do this job, and also deliver the fence posts for the new line of spearhead fencing.

At the end of the day one former post was out, and the other had about 50% of its concrete removed, with more to do next week.

We also have a picture of one of the 4 recovered spearhead panels, here resting at Winchcombe
for repair and de-rusting. Another 5 or 6 are being manufactured by us in-house, as they were at Broadway. We know how to do this now, using bought in components. They will be painted in the dry at Winchcombe first, prior to actual installation.

While the gang was at CRC there was a visitor in the form of P&O. This locomotive was wired up for sound recording, an unusual idea.
If you look carefully you can see the wire rolled out along the running board. There are also 3 foam rubber microphones along the top of the boiler. According to the footplate crew the sound recordings will be used by a well known model railway manufacturer to provide sound on their model locos. We hope not all of them! The mind boggles at the sight of a model standard tank chugging away like a 3 cylinder Bulleid pacific....

Our cub reporter from CRC also sent us this picture taken at Tyseley on Sunday. It shows Bahamas just outshopped after overhaul, and in steam.

Enjoy!

The other C&M team was working on finishing off the new shed extension for C&W at Winchcombe.

On an earlier day we caught the contractors in the middle of erecting the steelwork there. They had the old end of the shed off in just a morning, it went really quickly. This included two perfectly triangular pigeon's nests in the corners of the roof.

The little shed extension, to allow extra covered space for bogie overhauls, and perhaps even a goods wagon, is now pretty much up. It's a bit narrower than the rest of the shed, in order to allow continued unhindered access past the LH side, where things are a bit cramped.

During our visit the new roller shutter doors - the shed used to have an open end - were being installed and outside the C&M lads were mixing concrete to fill in the rest of the hole into which the extra stanchions have been placed.

The C&W will now be nice and snug inside. We were hoping for news of a house warming party, but so far, no luck.