Concrete & Clay

Concrete and Clay is the title of a record by the group Unit 4 Plus Two which topped the UK singles chart for one week in April 1965. Also Concrete and Clay are the two substances that the Drainage team spend a lot of time shovelling. Clay comes out of the excavations for new structures and concrete goes back in!

Thursday 21st April

Five team members in today, one away on holiday and one with family commitments.

The construction gang of three continued with the build of the haul road exit headwall of culvert 24C at Working Lane. They laid 8 courses of bricks and three courses of blocks. That used up our supply of small solid concrete blocks, so the final course contained a couple of the large heavy hollow BR blocks we recovered from the down side cess at Royal Oak. Some more of these were added as back fill. The block courses are now complete, there will be two or three more courses of bricks. This headwall is turning out to be one the larger builds we have undertaken. The temporary extension pipe was removed, so the bore is back to full diameter throughout.

Master brickie Polly in action. Note the two big hollow BR concrete blocks on the left top row.

Dave and Nigel on the mortar mixing.

End of day on 24C - next up is to fill the big void behind the headwall.

The odd job team of two first headed to Prescott Road Bridge (32) to under take an internal visual examination of culvert 31B. This flows under the bridge, adjacent to the low mileage abutment and right by the road. The main issues here are the upstream inlet pipe and the downstream outlet ditch – both of which are outside of railway land.

Inlet (down side) chamber of culvert 31B along side Prescott Road. The covers here are heavy kerb stones.

Next they checked the slip markers at Far Stanley (mile post 14¼). There was no obvious signs of recent movement.

Slip marker posts at Far Stanley, still all in line.

Then on to milepost 14 where the old rotten head was removed. Also removed the bridge rail back to workshop for de-rusting and painting. Quarter mile back they touched up the paint on the head of milepost 13¾.

Second coat of paint on the screw heads finishes milepost 13¾.

Along the way they trimmed various bits of vegetation and removed some saplings between Stanley Pontlarge and Royal Oak. After lunch it was off to Manor Lane to milepost 16¼ to paint the bridge rail and install the new head.

Sometimes it is easier to brush down and repaint the existing bridge rail posts in-situ. Martin applies the Hammerite to milepost 16¼.

Another one complete!

Finally back at Winchcombe they completed the painting of two more lengths of bridge rail and all the remaining new cast numerals that we have in stock. 

Thursday 28th April

A much reduced team of four in today - holiday, sickness and other commitments kept the other three away.

So no splitting into gangs – all proceeded to Working Lane. The telehandler was used to move some of the garden centre rubbish from around the willow tree stump on the hardstanding. This infill was moved to the uphill area where the hardstanding is to be extended. It was not possible to level it out as (a) it contains too many big items and (b) the land there is too soft to drive the telehandler off the haul road.

The telehandler was also used to add final layers of top soil to the infill of the new headwalls of culvert 24B.

Jonathan is distracted from telehandler operations by the passing of a train.

And this was the train, unusually a morning down train hauled by Peak class diesel 45149. This had replaced 2-8-0T 4270 due to steaming problems.

 

Concreting was the main task of the day at culvert 24C. A vast amount of it! Ten bags of cement and around 3 tonnes of aggregate were mixed and poured into the void behind the new headwall. This required a trip back to Winchcombe to bring over additional supplies of cement and aggregate. Yet more of the large hollow BR concrete blocks and some of the concrete lumps from the garden centre rubbish were also inserted into the void to reduce the required quantity of concrete.

Ten bags of cement, 3 tonnes of aggregate and several concrete blocks...

... results in a very solid back fill for the large up side haul road exit headwall on culvert 24C.

A small amount of concrete (well three barrow loads) were used to form an apron for a small headwall by the entrance to the pipe which will take water from the ditch by the boundary hedge.

Andrew levels off the small concrete apron at the entrance to the pipe from the boundary ditch. (Photo by Roger).

 

Finally, another quick visit to culvert 31B at Prescott Road Bridge (32). This was to take some more pictures of the inlet and outlet and to investigate water that is running across the road. This looks like it is a leak from a mains water pipe well uphill of the entry to our culvert.