I didn't touch it!

Thursday 30 May 

It wasn't me guv! that's the usual cry when something falls apart. The south wall on the up side of Culvert 11A was dismantled, this evidently didn't turn out to be a particular difficult task as it was found that there wasn't much holding it together. It had taken a battering from the increasing size and weight of the traffic passing under the bridge. The 1904 designers hadn't contemplated 15 tonne trailers or the John Deere 6130R. 

There were 2 streams of work today, Stuart headed off to Hunting Butts to assist with a lineside fence survey. Issues in that area with trespassers means that the security of the area beyond Evesham Road  (Bridge 43) requires tightening. The rest of the gang headed up to Stanton to carry on with the up side cess headwall and the up side gully drain at Bridge 11. 

Trespasser access point 

Stored rolling stock - a magnetic attraction 

Mike and Peter asses the problem space  

Innovative access method 

The team at Stanton were beavering away... 

Andrew and Roger backfilling the cess headwall
(Photo: Alastair)  

Roger finishing off the wing wall
(Photo: Alastair) 

Up side cess headwall, headers go on next 

New gully grate installed 

The bendy wall on the south side of Culvert 11A (up side) more or less fell apart when the headers were removed. The removed bricks will be cleaned for reuse in the rebuild. 

South side wall removed 

During the afternoon there was a demonstration of safe sandwich eating, you can never be too careful when lunch has been delayed.  

The sandwich filling may jump out 😉

The last job was to unload the concreting ballast brought up from Winchcombe.  

Roger unloads the ballast 

There's still action to be seen by the visiting engines, the gala may be over, but the LNER B1 1264 was out this week and will be out the weekend alongside the King (KEII 6023). 

LNER B1 1264 on holiday from the NYMR 

Lifting, a change from digging

Tuesday 28 May 

With just 3 in today, and 1 of those out for the morning at a H&S meeting it gave us the opportunity to do some essential stock moves. A pile of hardcore had been building up in Winchcombe Yard on top of our pile of gabion stone. As the gabion stone is needed at Stanton for the roadway repairs, the hardcore has to be moved, by coincidence it's destined for Stanton as well. 

After loading the first lot, Dave and Alastair set out for Stanton to unload and then to do some measuring at Toddington north cutting on the way back. 

First load ready for the off - loaded by hand 

Still plenty left before the gabions are accessible 

Alastair was measuring the retaining walls on each side of the cutting at Toddington as a favour for the Bridges and Structures engineers. 

Toddington North Cutting
(Photo: Alastair) 

Meanwhile at Winchcombe... 

Drainage is not all digging - Risk Assessment and Method Statement reviews 

After lunch, 2 more loads of hardcore were painstakingly hand loaded and then taken to Stanton to be equally painstakingly added to the stockpile there. 

Hardcore stockpile 

Alastair swabs the deck 

Depleted pile at Winchcombe 

After all that exertion (both physical and mental) we snook off home early 😉 

Steam Gala Special

Saturday 25 May 

Misleading title today, although being at Stanton gave us an exclusive view of the engines out for the 2019 Cotswold Festival of Steam. 

LNER B1 1264 on holiday from
the North Yorkshire Moors Railway 

Today we started on the new build of the up side cess outfall headwall and the rebuild of the gully under Bridge 11. To add a bit of interest, the remnants of the old up side ballast retaining wall from the south end of the viaduct met the fate of life expired block work. This lump of block was inadvertently reported in the last blog as being from the aqueduct, apologies must go to the water over rail bridge community 😉 

The ballast wall remains before 

Dave left to pick up the pieces 

Meanwhile down at the up side cess outfall, Roger and Alastair were busy...  

First course of brick going down 

Roger doing something with the spirit level 😊
(Photo: Alastair)

Just one Cornetto... the sunshade is for the mortar 

Later in the day. 

Progress upwards 

The gully drain sub-group made equally good progress, starting with correcting the level of the trench for the gully pipe. 

Michael shaving a few cm off the base 

Top courses of bricks off the silt trap 

While clearing the remaining debris out of the slit trap we probed to see if there is a concrete base, the bar went in 450 mm without hitting anything solid. We will drop a dry concrete mix  in to remedy this. 

Nothing solid in the bottom 

Pipe cut to length and dropped in 

A flow test was conducted on the pipe, just to be sure there were no uphill sections.  

Outlet pipe flow test passed 

Next stage is the rebuild, with the pipe to fix and then the silt trap to rebuild

  

Michael concretes the pipe in 

Getting it level
(Photo: Alastair) 

After over 100 years service, with possibly the last 50 years being buried, the old cast gully heads off to the recycling skip 

Like many centenarians, there's a few missing teeth 😉

Alastair and Stuart managed a bit of fire fighting for a little bit of added excitement this afternoon; just after the B1 had passed, smoke was spotted rising from the down side cess. So the intrepid duo sprang into action and extinguished the blaze small area of smouldering grass. 

Alastair tramples out the last of the ashes 

Visible progress today by packing up time; down under the bridge and up at the cess outfall.  

Wrapping up the gully drain until next week 

Starting to look like a headwall 

One last job before we left was to peg out the site for the hard standing and turn round area, the grass is suitable if the weather stays fine, but if we do get some rain we will have to go down to the crossing to turn the truck. A hard standing allows us to turn in safety and park away from the track. 

Dave doing the honours
(Photo: Alastair) 

Contractors will be arriving to level the area next week 

Roger testing that the measurements are correct 

It's often hard to imagine how much water our culverts have to cope with, Alastair has been into his archive and found these images from 2012 (Just 5 years after the 2007 floods), so hardly a 1 in 100 years event. 

Culvert 11A and down side cess meet
(Photo: Alastair) 

Culvert 11A up side - the scour is evident
(Photo: Alastair) 

A question about our Thursday blog prompted more explanation. Here's the map we use to see if we can sort out what has happened over the years. It looked like a siphon culvert north of Springfield Land at Broadway that was discovered. We can only guess about the location of the culvert outlet, this part of the trackbed isn't GWSR land but we will still try and get the covers made safe. 

The left hand map is the area pre-railway, the right is up to date. The old map shows 2 springs (each end of the blue arrow on both maps). The red arrow points to the current start of a visible ditch, the dashed green line shows the cess drain run from the station. From this we assume that the siphon is piped under the field an under the bypass (A44) before opening into a ditch again. The flow in the cess is less than the stream flow, so it isn't going into the cess. The assumption may be wrong, but further investigation is way down the priority list. 

That's it for this week, just a last view from our ring side seats at the Cotswold Festival of Steam. 

GWR 2-8-0T 4270 rumbles past this afternoon - another centenarian  

Expedition to the far north

Thursday 23 May 

The north in the title isn't the true North of flat caps an whippets, we don't need to go that far to see a proper engine as we have LNER B1 1264 visiting for the Cotswold Festival of Steam. Our idea of the far north is Springfield Lane at Broadway. That's the land time forgot beyond the palisade gate to the north of Broadway station. Why trek all the way up there you may ask; well the station storm drains run to a stream to the north of the by-pass so we like to keep an eye on them to make sure water is still running away. 

Looking back over the fence to Broadway Station 

Trackbed used by dog walkers and runners among others 

Chamber hiding in the brambles with its lids displaced 

Andrew and Stuart replace the lids
(Photo: Alastair) 

Andrew and Alastair replace the next lot 

Some chambers were too deeply covered for us to access without disturbing any birds (It's bird nesting season until the end of August) so we will need to return in the winter to cut our way in. 

There should be a chamber in there somewhere 

From the way the lids have been displaced it looks like someone has run along the trackbed with a flail at some time since our last visit, that would explain why the overgrowth isn't more established. We did discover a manhole that we weren't expecting to find, it appears to be a siphon taking a stream from the down side to a point unknown. Looking at satellite imagery, it would appear that the stream is next visible over the north side of the by-pass. 

Mystery chamber contains a large bore iron pipe 

Milepost 4/11 - in need of a coat of paint 🙃

Another displaced lid 

Dr Livingstone I presume 😃

No pot of gold at the end of the expedition,
just a GWR through bloter chair rescued from the stream 

Nobody volunteered to carry the chair back the 1/2 mile to the truck!  

Next stop, Stanton, this remnant of the down side aqueduct abutment needs to be broken up to add to the recycling pile. Andrew and Alastair had a go with the SDS drill, but in the end the block beat them. We will have another try with the large SDS next week. 

Aqueduct abutment remains 

It was built to last 😊

After lunch we moved down to Bridge 11 to take levels along the gully drain 

Andrew with the staff, Stuart with the pencil 

The results have been plotted, the first plot explains why we haven't piped the gully into the culvert; the grey line is the culvert floor, the blue line below is the gully pipe, the orange line at the bottom is the bottom of the gully chamber to the base of the scour hole at the end of the culvert channel. 

A close up on the gully excavation shows why the drain never worked well, it runs up hill in 2 places which isn't ideal for getting water flowing. It only had a 40 mm fall over the 10 m run. 

For a bit of light relief we then attempted to extract the remaining loose bricks from the culvert, this time using the Mk 7 rod attached brick remover. 

Mk 7 Brick Remover 

Stuck - teething troubles 

Like all good inventions, brick removal tools go through a development life-cycle. The Mk 7b(2) faired better 

Stuart modifies the Mk 7 design into the Mk 7b(2) -
Or just saws the top corners off 😏

Alastair scoops out the disturbed ballast 

The modified version worked, in that one brick came out, it's still bouncing over the the last couple of bricks. 

Outlet end 

Andrew pulls the return rope 

After another varied and partly successful day, it was time to pack up and return to Winchcombe to unload.