Moving stone

Weekending 10 April 

Split team for the morning, with two team going to check reports of standing water near MP 17½, south of Two Hedges Road, Bishops Cleeve. Nothing was found, but this is probably down to the fact it hasn't rained for over a week. 

Report and photos from Andrew. 

Foggy start at Bridge 33 over Dixton Cutting 

The main task for the day was to backfill the down side counterfort drain pipe on the low mileage side of the Three Arch Bridge at Dixton (Bridge 33). Stone and hardcore was carted from Manor Lane at Gotherington. The estimate was for 8 loads, but it actually took 10😫 It turned out to be a merry go round operation with the 2 Transit trucks. Fortunately the barrow run at Dixton Road was short and it was empty barrows to be pushed uphill.  

Back filled drain at Dixton 

Backfilled drain at Dixton from the top 

Week ending 17 April 

Another mob handed week, with 5 present. Two went to remove silt from the manhole on the up side at Culvert 28A, Stanley Pontlarge. This is a regular occurrence, it dried up for a while but it looks like the upstream blockage has been rectified. Chamber was half full of slit, with evidence it had overtopped.

Next 4 photos from Dave.  

Slurry coming out of the chamber on Culvert 28A 

Slurry trail 😏

All left clear and tidy 

Here's a reminder of what it's all about, trains are back running again after a very disrupted year. 

GWR 2-8-0 4270 running bunker first 

The rest of the team went Culvert 27A  and 27B, on the up side to sort out an area of boggy ground by the new fence and gate. The boggy area was most pronounced from the new gate for about 10 yards towards Cheltenham. A ditch was dug out to investigate and a twin land drain was uncovered. The clay pipes between the gate and the culvert had been displaced at some time with gaps in the joins causing the leak. 

Next batch of pics from Andrew. 

Culvert 27A Boggy gate area 

Ditch between 27A and 27B up side 

Misaligned clay pipes 

An exploratory hole was dug under the gate and a green plastic pipe appears to be be connected to one of clay pipes. This seems to have been disturbed by the fencing contractor when the gate was installed. 

Plastic pipe under gate 

It was decided that leaving the temporary ditch draining the boggy area was best for today, a return visit will be made to finish the job off. 

End of day

 

The run up to Easter

Saturday 27th March 

Headline news; all culverts along the running line have been checked this month and there are no major items to deal with before resumption of train services on 13th April. 

Back to the reporting, the first job of the day was to check out a report of a failure on the up side crest drain between Toddington Station and Stanway Viaduct. The hole with the broken pipe was located and broken bits of pipe dug out. It looked like it is the start of the crest drain, running north. All very dry, nothing has flowed here for a long while. Another visit has been planned to fill the hole with free draining stone. 

Photos and report from Andrew. 

Up side crest drain excavated 

Crest drain joins the cess drain and
runs down the up side of the viaduct 

On the down side of Culvert 14B at Didbrook 1 there are 2 large baulks which used to be part of the farmers bridge upstream. these have washed down into the mouth of the culvert. Removal will be another job for when more hands are available to lift them back out of the stream. 

Culvert 14B down side inlet 

A couple of slabs needed to be replaced at Culvert 15A down side channel and Culvert 16C stonework on the inlet from the field (just on the boundary fence) needs some sorting out. 

Culvert 16C down side fence 

Culvert 21A River Isbourne is still a work in progress, works temporarily halted in Jan 2020 so the contractor could deal with the slip at Winchcombe. Since then pandemic funding issues have prevented a restart. It's probably going to be a long wait until this gets funded again. 

 

Michael and Martin survey the abandoned works
 on Culvert 21A up side 

Tuesday 30 March 

Nigel and Dave were in today to do a couple of jobs, firstly, off loading the stone from the Transit at Gotherington Yard. Then filling up the tipper to take stone down to Bishops Cleeve to do the repairs to the disused trackbed that was washed out by flash flooding at Christmas. 

Pictures and report from Dave... 

Loading more stone at Manor Lane 

Filling the washed out section of trackbed 

The stone, like ballast, is seemingly designed to resist shovelling, and to avoid wilting too much in the heat from lengthy shovelling sessions, they made three trips back and forth to fill the holes.  

The size of the washout can be seen by 
the depth of fill required 

Disused trackbed repaired at Bishops Cleeve

That's all for now.