It's all happening at Winchcombe

Lots of jobs going on today, the gang was active in several different locations, mostly indoor ones, as it was raining heavily.

Interesting is the recovery of 4 high spearhead fencing panels from Cheltenham. They were straightened by C&W (recovered spearhead fencing panels are almost never straight) and then cleaned up by the B&S gang. Some were cleaned indoors...

...while others were cleaned outdoors, but under shelter.

It's a slow job getting all the rust off. Austen and Jim attacked this one in the car port, and they even got a coat of primer on after lunch. In the workshop Bruce was making some new wooden gates for Winchcombe station.

Mike touched up the paintwork applied last week in the training room in the visitor centre. The floor covering goes down next week.

The downstairs room has received its floor covering, but will upstairs have the same?

Mike also varnished the door to the training room upstairs. You can see the round window at the back to give you an idea of where that is.

Out by the forecourt the anti dog fouling fence is nearing completion. The vertical posts still need to be trimmed, and a layer of concrete will be provided below the fence panels.

A similar run of fencing is needed up the steps by the new building, but the day was really too wet to do this. The gang got soaked just by simply removing the protective fence panels that were there. Enough already !

A major advance at Winchcombe is the start by a contractor of the new concrete roadway through the Cotswolds side of the site. This has been a potholed quagmire for years.

The station end of the Winchcombe site lies in a shallow cutting, and it therefore attracts rainwater  naturally, which then drains only slowly. This concrete roadway will stop the rutting and potholing, and the large puddles of water which always accumulate.

There's a fair bit of traffic down the site. S&T, the drainage dept., C&W and the PWay yard are all reached by this roadway, sometimes by large and heavy lorries.

Eventually the whole of the yard to the left of the picture will be redesigned, but first of all it has to be cleared. This process has started, but patience is needed.




In the afternoon 3 B&S gang members went to Broadway, where the group have undertaken to lay the original granite kerbs by the forecourt in front of the building

This one here is a large 6ft long example that was rescued from tipping at Broadway. It was collected last week and will now be reused in its original position. That's railway restoration! On the right BTW is one of the original stone blocks that supported the 1904 canopy at Broadway. Today the canopy sits on a hidden steel frame inside the walls of the building.

Seven more granite kerbs were dug up at Broadway recently, and these too will be re-used, together with a complement from a reclamation yard. The B&S gang spent a happy afternoon, in less rain, pressure washing the seven that were recently recovered. They ended up just as wet though. Laying of the kerbs will start in earnest next Saturday, weather permitting.