Rock hard!

The changeable late Winter and early Spring weather is still affecting our plans; and not just because of too much rain. Certainly there is a lot of truth in the saying ‘Other countries have climate, the UK has weather!’

Thursday 17^th March

The day before (Wednesday of the Cheltenham Race meeting) had seen heavy rain almost all day; but St. Patrick’s day was dry and warm. However, there was a lot of water coming down off the Cotswolds and most of our culverts were flowing well. This included 25A at Working Lane, Gretton which we wished to survey the upstream bore with our CCTV equipment. This is an open channel in a brick invert underneath the bridge, but is culverted upstream. Old maps of the 1920s show it as an open ditch all the way back to Winchcombe Road. We wished to see the state of the bore whilst under railway land, and whether there are any connections from road or house drains. One of the home owners has reported occasional flooding of a land drain which probably connects into the main culvert. Unfortunately the depth of water was over the top of the camera trolley, so we could not see anything. Hence a task postponed for later.

Looking upstream in the bore of culvert 25A at Gretton. CCTV trolley was underwater. There must be a manhole up there somewhere!

The construction team of three completed the concreting for the apron of the new culvert 24C exit headwall by the haul road on the up side at Working Lane. This involved almost a tonne of aggregate and a lot of bags of cement. So both the long wheel based Transits trucks were used - one for plant and one for materials. There also had to be a return trip to Winchcombe to swap cement mixers as the drive belt on one broke. (Unlike C&M, we do not have names for our mixers, they are just the older one and the newer one).

Concrete apron for culvert 24C haul road exit headwall poured. Note the temporary barrow run on the planks to the right. (The smaller diameter extension pipe is only temporary; to get the water away from the setting concrete and in the coming weeks to keep the bricklayer's feet dry.)

Meanwhile an odd job team of two first attended to a request to install slip marker posts. This is just north of Stanway viaduct on the down side by the Toddington distant signal. PWay have had to regularly top up the ballast for a short length here, hence the request to monitor for slips. A visual check of the embankment side revealed no tell tale signs; but plenty of animal holes. This is an area where badgers were active until a few years ago; the up side embankment was meshed to stop any more digging. Additionally the area of concern is right on top of culvert 11C; which many years ago was extended with a pipe on the down side, that involved digging into the embankment.

Slip monitoring posts in place on down side north of Stanway Viaduct. Marker post for culvert 11C visible lineside and beyond the area with plenty of ballast topped up.

The odd job team then moved up to the B4632 bridge (No 8) at Stanton. Now the bridge works are complete we had access to install the new head for milepost 7¾. This is the first of the ‘house number’ style posts to be replaced with the more authentic new head with numerals in the correct GW typeface. Then it was on to Broadway for a similar exercise for milepost 5. Another ‘house number’ head but this time on a non authentic wooden post. The bolts fixing the head to the post refused to move thus preventing a simple swap of heads. The complete post and head were removed back to the workshop, but still the bolts would not budge! Partial dismantling of the head revealed extensive damp and a lot of woodlice inside; a consequence of not fitting rainproof flashing on the head. Renovating this head with correct numerals for reuse elsewhere will be a bigger task than anticipated. The new milepost 5 head will now be mounted on a length of bridge rail in the coming weeks. This will be much more in keeping with the heritage look at Broadway; milepost 4¾ just north of the up platform will be replaced in a similar way.

Out with the house numbers, in with the authentic looking GW style numerals. Mp 7¾ is just on the Toddington side of the B4632 bridge at Stanton if you want to look out for it.

A train picture for a change. This was our first working day of the year with real trains to watch out for - here 47105 brings the ECS for the Friday Broadway race train past the site of milepost 5.

Thursday 24^th March

A complex plan involving three sub teams with four vehicles working at four sites was the order of the day.

Another request to install a set of slip monitoring posts was attended to. This time it was on the up side in Toddington north cutting, so just south of the viaduct. When the vegetation was cut on the cutting side it revealed the tell tail signs of a slip; cracks in the ground near the top and a snout of material near the bottom. From our investigations it looks like this is not a very recent slip; with the marker posts in place we can monitor it to determine if it is still moving. The down side cutting behind the retaining wall by the north siding has a similar ‘dormant’ slip discovered a few years ago.

More slip monitoring posts; up side Toddington North.

The construction team today was only two in number; but they made excellent progress on the new headwall for culvert 24C haul road exit at Working Lane. No problems with out mixers today (I think it was the older one in use). Seven courses of concrete blocks (new small ones, not the heavy recovered BR era big hollow ones) and one course of bricks went in. The wall here will be 14 courses of block high; so we are halfway there already.

Halfway there - well on the block courses. 24C haul road exit headwall takes shape. When complete it will be one of our higher headwalls.

Earlier in the day, chief brickie Polly does not pause for the photographer. Note how the temporary extension pipe is keeping the work area dry.

We are extending the hard standing area at the bottom of the haul road. The Saturday clearance team have removed the vegetation in the foreground and some of the willow tree. The rest is due to be felled on Saturday 27th. The area will be levelled using infill from the old garden centre at Toddington.

 

 

The main job of the day was at Stanley Pontlarge, repairing the driveway through the small holding adjacent to the railway on the up side. Unfortunately the warm, dry, sunny weather over the previous week had made the ground rock hard, too hard for the telehandler to level out. So, unusually, we have had to postpone a task until we get some wet weather to soften the ground. We did however place some of the one tonne of No1 stone we collected from Bishops Cleeve in the worst of the ruts in the driveway. The rest of the stone is on site for when we can resume the job.

The only soft ground at Stanley Pontlarge was this puddle under the railway gate. One month ago all the drive way was mud - deep in places.

Awaiting a damp day - the rest of the stone for the driveway repair at Stanley Pontlarge.

Whilst we had the telehandler and the Citroen tipper truck in the area we proceeded to Gotherington yard to load one of the dumpy bags of pea gravel we recovered from Dixton Bridge last year. This was used to make good the damage to the U shaped concrete drain channels in Dixton Cutting, between the Tirle Brook flume culvert (32A) and Prestcott Road Bridge. Hopefully with the PWay work now complete in Dixton cutting there will be no more damage to these concrete channel; they are impossible to repair and exact replacements of these BR era relics do not exist.

Pea gravel used to level out tops of the BR style U shape concrete drainage channel. When new this would have had concrete lids on it for the entire length (nearly ¾ mile here at Dixton Cutting).

Whilst all the weather related disruptions to our plans are annoying; working out side in warm, spring sunshine was a joy. It was almost like summer!