It's been windy

The gang was happy to lay more bricks, but first of all they needed to repair the damage from the high winds we had in the recent storm. Something about water dripping in your tea from above....

The gang had to nail patches to the roofing felt - we've been lucky here, because in other cases the wind has ripped all the felt off at once! B&S were more fortunate and only got holes.

While up there, one of the gang took this rather unusual and rare picture of Winchcombe yard. You can see that it lies a little lower than the original ground level on the left, and if you remember the picture of Winchcombe yard being constructed in the last Cornishman, you would have seen the steam powered excavator digging here. In the background is a small area of the yard that was sold off in the early days of the railway. The typical GWR pines are on the far right. The C&W extension building is also on the far right, nearer the camera.

Meanwhile, work did not stand still on the platform extension, and Wednesday this week saw further block and brick laying.

Here a tower has been constructed (is that mortar the right colour?) so that a line can be drawn between two points and the intermediate space filled in nice and straight.

However where the rain had got into the brick holes a turkey basting pipette was used to remove the water and very successful it was too. The CRC2 gang has a patent pending for this trick, where a car battery testing pipette was used.

The edging slabs from CRC2 also arrived in two loads. These are now stacked in the yard ready for sorting, before final storage at the rear of the yard.


A further delivery from Fairview ensured the gang had sufficient materials to keep going as fast as they could.

This last picture shows how the wall is constructed out of concrete blocks, with a facing row of blues. A steady curve also has to be maintained here. More concrete blocks await laying on the right.

The p/w boys started the track removal through the station on Wednesday, so the pressure is now on to complete the work before the next season, all good fun. Fishplates were removed and the rails tipped out, in readiness for the complete removal of the platform 2 (and a part of platform 1) track. The spent ballast will then be dug out.


No reaction for the mystery picture last time, so here is another one, for which there are no notes. Can anyone help?

3808 was last stationed at Newport Ebbw Vale, so could this be the place? It's a big looking shed, so does anyone know? What type of loco is that on the right?

I've been given an envelope with all sorts of steam locomotive photographs taken by John Diston (who died in 2012) and his brother very kindly let me scan them in and post them on my Flickr site, so that they won't be lost, and people can enjoy them. They are unique echos of the past, after all.

You can see them here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/73536293@N02/sets/

At the moment there are 49 photographs up, and I will be posting more, bit by bit, once I have repaired them from the heavy wear and tear that they have had. The first 30 or so are in the GWR region, then the Southern, and then further north and so on. John traveled around in his spare time from working at Gordon Russel's and it's amazing how far he got! All are of steam locomotives, but many photographs had no caption, so I've had to puzzle them out myself, and any help is gratefully received.