The Perils of Peasebrook Farm

Star Date July 2020 

The 'Phasers on Stun' call came through to Drain Gang HQ from Star Fleet Command on the 10th of July. Well perhaps it would have if Captain James T Kirk had driven a Long Wheelbase Ford Transit Crew Cab with a tail lift. It's not so much Warp Factor 5 as 0 - 60 in 2 days, 14 hours, 22 minutes and 7.364 seconds. Anyway, that's all irrelevant, but we did get the diversionary call to say 'Drop the Bridges' and head back north to just beyond Bridge 4 at Peasebrook Farm. A track defect had been spotted and there was a concern that the embankment may be the cause. 

Peasebrook Farm Embankment 

After the slips at Gotherington and Winchcombe last year, there's a heightened focus on the stability of the tipped clay embankments. When they were built between 1903 and 1905 they didn't have things like the Caterpillar CP74B Compactor with a vibratory roller weighing in at 16.3 tonnes. They did have horses and carts though, plus some construction tracks. Although the earthworks have largely stood the test of time, the increased loading over the years can take a toll on the underlying structure. 

Peasebrook isn't on the side of a hill like Gotherington, the land is bordering the Vale of Evesham, good growing land, and it's reasonably flat, not quite Norfolk but not the Cotswolds either. Our mission was (and still is as it's not completed yet) to clear a lot of vegetation so that the earthwork can be examined. An added bonus job is to take levels across the formation to draw cross sections for reference.

Looking over the up side to Bredon Hill 

Looking south from Bridge 4 

Dave and Nigel were first on the scene, they took out a 20m slice of the up side slope vegetation, and found nothing untoward. Just a few rabbit holes that were mostly inactive, no sign of cracking or slippage.

First section of the up side slope cleared
(Photo: Dave) 

Nigel takes a breather, it's tough going after lockdown
(Photo: Dave) 

Andrew and Martin were next into the fray, they took a strip off along the top of the slope to expose any deformation of the earthworks. 

Looking north towards Broadway before clearing
(Photo: Andrew)

Top 5m of the slope cleared, looking north
(Photo: Andrew)

On of the rabbit holes exposed
(Photo: Andrew)

Martin hiding in the shade, it can be hot work
(Photo: Andrew)

Because it's still bird nesting season, a survey is carried out each morning to see if there is any flying activity prior to clearing. The bottom 2/3 of the slope has been left to minimise any interference. Luckily the only activity we have seen is the buzzard wheeling over the fields and a few pigeons looking for the pig food in the adjacent field. 

Strip along the top of the slope to Culvert 3A cleared
(Photo: Andrew) 

Next job for Dave and Nigel was cutting a path down to the fence every 11m for the levels to be measured.

Dave's clearance viewed in artistic mode
(Photo: Dave) 

Martin doing flail training while clearing the side of the access road

That brings us nearly up to date, some of the levels have been measured and more paths cut out for even more levels. The Permanent Way department have been here in between times and unclipped the rails and are now busy re-clipping them to the sleepers. 

Looking north Pandrol clips laid in the 4', rails unclipped 

Looking south from above Culvert 3a

USS Enterprise parked up in the shade 😂😂😂

First down side path cut to get a profile measurement 

Looking north for no particular reason 

Martin sorting out the measuring staff 

Levelling along towards the 5 3/4 mile post 

Martin down the down side toe with the staff 

One similarity with Gotherington is that there are signs of historic repair works, this can be seen by the proliferation of ash and clinker on the slope.

That's all caught up then, it's 15 days work completed since mid-June, just 31 FTE days. Last year in the same period we completed nearly 100 days on the Culvert 11A rebuild work. This COVID-19 has certainly taken a toll on productivity. Until trains start running again and visitors start to come back, the work at Royal Oak that we were engaged in back in March will remain stalled. With zero income for 4 months and the usual bills and wages to pay the railway finances have suffered, there's no spare cash for the jobs deemed not essential for getting trains running. 

One job that can't wait is the structures inspections, legally they must be done within set periods. Our Bridges team are organising these for later this month. One of the structures on the list was Culvert 31B under Prescott Road bridge. This has been a silt magnet for many years as the downstream ditch is virtually non-existent, there's a bit of 6" pipe but the ditch it flows into has become overgrown, so it probably isn't working any more. The wall rebuild on the outlet ditch was in the work programme for this year, but it got the chop along with some other drainage jobs. 

The end channel on 31B was cleared by a contractor with a min-digger earlier this week and on Thursday the jet/vac arrived to blast the silt out of the brick arch. On the way back to Winchcombe we did a detour to see how they had got on. 

Jet/Vac tanker at Culvert 31B 

The freshly dug ditch on the us side end of 31B 

The report on the jetting told us that 6,000 gallons of water had been blasted into the culvert, 4 tanker loads, but the compacted silt had proved to be a bit too stubborn. One solution suggested to clear the remainder was sending a man in with a shovel. That may work if we can find a thin volunteer who can breathe underwater. You can bet that shovelling it out by hand would take less time than creating the risk assessments and sorting all the other health & safety requirements out for the job 😉

Silt deposits remaining in Culvert 31B 

In other news, the Lineside clearance department have come to the rescue at Culvert 32A in Dixton Cutting. For some time there has been a problem with fallen branches. Drainage currently have no volunteers who are chain saw qualified so a call went out to Clearance and they stepped in and got the job done in a couple of days. Thanks very much team, it looks a load better now. 

Culvert 32A, Lineside Clearance at work near the down side fence
(Photo: Clearance Team)

Culvert 32 inlet stream - Tirle Brook
(Photo: Paul V) 

Culvert 32A, down side
(Photo: Paul V)

Culvert 32A Dixton, from the down side fence
(Photo: Paul V)

Hopefully if the blogger gets his act together we can get back to a more frequent update regime. 

Thanks for reading