Saturday 6 July
The plot thickens back at Culvert 11A; a bit more of the north wall on the up side came down today. That's literally down as in dismantled. All this up (as in 'up side' and up as in 'building higher') must be confusing. The UK railway industry have always use this terminology; there's a Wikipedia article for those who would like to be confused even more:
As the Honeybourne Line didn't run towards London, the GWR used Birmingham as the towards direction for the up side. Simple 😟
Enough digressing, what did we do today; knocked things down and started to build them up again. The end section of the up side north wall was thought to be solid, but as the deconstruction of the centre section moved along it was noticed that the whole section moved in one lump, therefore, it had to go. The bricks have gone onto the 'to be cleaned' pile ready for processing and reuse. The blue taper bricks were removed from the down side channel beyond the wing wall.
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| Up side at start of day |
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| The 'not so solid' north side end wall |
A crack can be seen along the base of the end of the north wall, just above the water line. The south side end had broken off some years ago and was found in a lump up by the wing wall.
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| Michael cleans off all the crud ready to start the rebuild |
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| Roger starts butting the bricks back |
It may have been mentioned that Alastair is away, this means that other volunteers get to hone their mixing skills...
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| Roger on the mixer this morning |
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| Synchronised bricklaying |
As this is the height of the English summer the weather must get a mention, the blue sky we had on Thursday has been replaced by a thick grey cloud. This change did make things a bit cooler when working, so it's not all bad 😊
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| GWR 2-8-0T 4270 running past under the heavy cloud |
The flow diversion for the down side was implemented this morning. This involved sandbagging the end of the inlet pipe and pumping the flow round the side of the culvert. The pipe for the pump wasn't quite long enough to reach the gully drain on the up side, so a temporary arrangement of 150 mm and 225 mm twinwall was constructed. What could possibly go wrong!
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| Flow bypass looking towards the up side |
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| Flow bypass on the down side |
What went wrong, nothing too serious, just the hose from the pump needed more support to stay in the raised end of the twinwall. Modification A was implemented 😏
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| Flow bypass Modification A |
After that it worked a treat, a bit of a leaky jointed treat, but it worked.
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Water pooling out of the side of the inlet pipe
Signs of a leak at the joint with the concrete pipe over the hedge |
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| Blue taper bricks removed from the invert |
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| Bricks out ready for cleaning |
Next job was to remove the edge course of the red tapers, these are softer bricks and most just crumble when removed. We managed to save a few to go in to the arch on down side.
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The remaining reds will be covered
under the new concrete base |
Back on the up side, the wall is well above above the water line so the pump could be taken out.
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| Michael and Roger still ensconced in channel |
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| The new end wall on the north wall taking shape |
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Don't dive in, it's not deep enough yet 😮
Or the spirit level being used to measure the gap |
Another day where the end goal has gone slightly to the right; but the north wall is already looking in better shape that it was at the start of the week
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| View from the bridge |
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| Up side north wall arch end |
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| Up side north wall outfall end |
All starting to look very good. Well done boys. P-)
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