Recent Activities at Winchcombe

Things have been a bit quiet on the blogging front from Construction and Maintenance as our two main bloggers have been away for a while. In order to try and avoid this gap in the future we are bringing on board new bloggers who have been involved in the background in the past but have now been given publishing rights. So bear with us if the next few posts are not quite the same format as in the past.

New Running-in Board for Pershore !

Bruce has been working on a new running-in board for the friends of Pershore Railway Station, yes Pershore ! - You may be surprised to know that GWSR took on this piece of work for an agreed fee after the friends had seen the quality of the running-in boards on our railway and wanted one of their own for the Cotswold Line.

Here is the finished article in all its glory, waiting to be fitted with supporting posts. (note the picture has been rotated 90 degrees by Jim to show the finished effect).

New Door and Frame for Acetylene Building at Toddington

Barrie has been working away on this woodworking masterpiece to replace the timber frame and door for the Acetylene building. 

These are going to replace the rotten door and frame in the next few weeks.

Roofing Repairs at Toddington

The team have been tasked with repairing the roof to the Admin building at Toddington. After a great deal of careful cutting and jointing new felt was installed by Paul and Jim H. Here Paul is putting on the side felt to finish the job off.

Tim Mitchell Building Signage

Phil and Jim M had to get the scaffolding tower out this week and did a great job installing the name board to the Tim Mitchell Building. It really finishes off the building nicely.

West Yard Development at Winchcombe

The main board have given the approval for the improvement works to be started on the West Yard at Winchcombe Station. Survey work has been done on the area concerned and a variety of initiatives have been started to generally improve the area from the present end of the Platform 2 picnic area down past the giant oak tree opposite the Carriage & Wagon building. Eventually the plan is for the public to be given access to this area and for there to be a circular metal seat fitted under the large Oak as often found in the gardens of stately homes.

The Heritage Team have been building a new platform wall alongside the siding farthest from the main line. The blockwork for this is now complete and the next stage is to add the blue facing bricks and bull nosed coping bricks recovered from a working Network Rail site and Tyseley.

At the end of the siding a new reinforced retaining wall is being built to ensure that the West Yard access track can accommodate load carrying vehicles that have used the crossing by the signal box. 

Here Pete and Rob are sorting out how the hollow blocks sit on the reinforcing bars. (It was all fully designed beforehand - honest)

In a later photo Jim M, Pete and Austen are filling the hollow blocks with Grade 25 concrete to give the wall the full strength it needs. Both faces of this wall will eventually be faced with blue bricks

To the side of the new Platform the Heritage Team working with C&M supervision are putting in the new concrete raft base that will ultimately support the weighbridge hut recovered from Usk. More details of this project can be found on the Heritage Herald blog. Here Dave is driving the tele-handler while Paul is guiding him where to drop the blinding stone.

On Wednesday 11th we finally had our delivery of steel reinforcement for the weighbridge hut raft. This has been designed by an external structural engineer to carry the loads from the hut over the relatively unstable filled ground in this area. Here Mike is bringing nearly a tonne of bars to the site of the raft with the tele-handler.

In the picture above Austen and Rob have had to segregate all 160 main bars to check that we had had the full delivery. It was a good job that we did as we were one bar short. Luckily our suppliers were very apologetic and got the missing bar to us the next day. The Heritage Team will be busy over the next couple of weeks putting this all together. In the background Paul is taking a well earned rest after single-handedly working on the blinding stone.

More details to follow .....