Concrete at Cheltenham

A large sized job was undertaken by the gang last week, when they sorted out the approaches to the north end crossing at CRC. The crossing had been replaced following use by the contractors building the new stand at the race course, but the approaches remained very muddy and not well drained.

This is the start of the work. A lot of preparation has already taken place - the area levelled, old concrete and a broken drain removed, kerbs placed, and most importantly, a heavy duty Aco drain laid across the Cotswold side. This is where the water would wash down and over the track. Reinforcement matting was then laid across.

Then came the Easy Mix lorry. It gives you just the right amount; the crossing couldn't handle a whole concrete mixer full.

The Easy Mix lorry has a nice long reach, so that you can get to those far away corners - like the CRC crossing!

There's a bit left over for the front. The old surface was broken out, and replaced with a proper reinforcement mat and re-concreted. A professional job.

The surface was then levelled off for a nice finish...

...so that it looked like this at the end of the job.

A new gate post was also installed, and the gate is now reversed so that it can be opened either way (this is how it should have been done originally). A catch post still has to be fitted, and this will be done shortly.

All this activity was watched over by the signalman - it's what they do, between trains.

Before the platform 2 tarmac was laid the gang assisted the Broadway lads with sanding the top of the platform infill. This took up a couple of Wednesdays for half the gang, while the rest got on with painting the car park fence (a requirement from the race course).

Once the CRC2 the mess hut container has been removed and the bank under it regraded, the gang will return to complete the fence across to the field gate. As a start to fencing this side, the temporary wooden fence on platform 1 was taken down and re erected alongside the new path leading from platform 2 to the crossing.

The slagstone retaining wall on platform 1 has now been rebuilt, and this allowed the temporary fencing here to be taken down and re used on the other side. A neat job here.

The gang have also been quite busy on various other little jobs on the railway. This is what makes the B&S gang so interesting (a plug here if you want to join them :-)  ) as there is always something new to do.

At Winchcombe the Elf centre was refurbished one last time for the upcoming Santa season, before its replacement by a permanent structure and departure for rebuilding at another location off the railway. This involved removal of some rotten timbers, a complete rub down and then a final coat of paint.

One difficult job that had been ongoing for about two years was the water disposal pipe from the water treatment plant. This was finally installed and completed.

Pat bless him built yet another platform bench (we have lost count of how many he has done). We seem to have quite a few of these now.

We have continued the collection of the free bricks, and this coming Saturday will be the last trip. It will give the railway a substantial stock of blue & red imperial size bricks, plus a fair number of specials.

We also did a couple of trips to a building site in Cirencester where they were coming to the end of the job, and we were given a substantial amount of building materials that they would have thrown in a skip (including the Aco drain used by the CRC crossing).

More jobs are in the pipeline!