News roundup

The B&S gang have been busy with a large variety of (often unseen) jobs, of which we give below a selection to keep you up to date.

The end wall of the Flag & Whistle cafe, and the inside wall of the kitchen store room are now all renewed and painted up. A concrete slope to the boardroom door was also installed, so that no one has to stand in a puddle to open the door any more.

Nearby, and while at Toddington, they replaced the door to Dave Staniforth's store shed, as the old one had started to fall appart.

Moving on to Winchcombe, the two flat roofs on the Monmouth Troy building have had sealant coats added to prolong their life. The roof of the weighbridge opposite on inspection was found to be infested with woodworm which was also still active, so the decision to completely replace was agreed. While up on the roof, the top 3 courses of the chimney stack were found to be loose so these were removed, cleaned and cemented back on. Additional pointing work was found to be necessary, some other bricks were found to be loose so these were also relaid. The guttering on the other hand turned out to be in very good condition, apart from leaking joints. This has now been refurbished and awaits refixing. Most of the replacement timber has now been prepared and cut to approximate size but will not be fitted just yet as other priorities must be done first.

The weighbridge roof at winchcombe is a secondary project so it is being attended to whenever possible. Hopefully the rebuild will resume next week, as this is a total rebuild due to the woodworm infestation.

Also at Winchcombe, the new visitor centre is now externally complete, and the scaffolding has been removed, so that you can now better see what it looks like.

This is the platform side. We were told that replica sliding doors have still to be added, which will make it look the part from the visitor point of view.

This is a view under the canopy above the platform. The building is expected to be completed by the end of September. The building was erected by contractors.

At Gotherington the old events sign by the bridge was removed, and some temporary sand patches spread on the Cotswolds side platform to cover some voids detected there. It is hoped to complete the job with a more permanent surface soon, as there is now a very obvious mismatch in the colours.

Finally, the gang moved on to CRC to start work on completing the Malvern side approach to the level crossing.

With the new P2 footpath arriving here, the unsurfaced appearance of the crossing itself has become more apparent.

The first job was to remove about 10 tons of gravel, in order to make room for the new surface.

This gravel is still useable; it may be offered to Broadway to help with their P1 infill. Nothing goes to waste here!

In the foreground here is the neat new path from the rebuilt P2. What the B&S guys are doing here is, after levelling off the old surface, building new edgings around the outside, which will contain the concrete layer, which is still to come.

Here is the new edging, now in place. The signalman will also have a nice new surface to stand on, instead of the building site that he has had up to now.

The spoil heap on the other side of the tracks was also removed.

It is hoped to have the pad all concreted in before the end of September .

The gang also laid a base for the concrete fog hut (removed from Toddington), which will stand a few feet from the crossing.  Finally they rebuilt the water stop tap chamber, which was uncovered while digging the base. A new bib tap will be installed, fixed to the fog hut, so there is a water point at that end of platform 2 for use by the station staff.

In between they completed refurbishing the booking office roof at CRC, which thankfully turned out to be much easier than expected. The rain tried to delay them, but perseverance prevailed.