Additions and deletions

Like all the other departments on the railway, we have quite an extensive set of documents including process descriptions, risk assessments and so on. One of the most important documents is a spreadsheet which shows all the outstanding tasks relating to the structures for which we are involved with. Each task has an assigned priority. This ranges from ‘Critical’ (currently none of these, as this category implies immediate action to enable safe running of trains) down to ‘Nice to have sometime’. During our annual cycle of visual inspections we update this spreadsheet frequently, ensuring task descriptions match the condition of the structure. Of course, we add entries for tasks to fix newly discovered issues. This year we have also been to complete some of the outstanding tasks at the same time as the inspection, thus we have some deletions from the list. Currently the number of deletions is just keeping up with the number of additions!

Thursday 29^th September

Productivity of the team took a serious dive today as only three of the team were available.

Hence, the only activities were clearing and internal visual inspections of culvert 11A and cross drain 11B; plus installing a couple more blue mesh covers on the damaged concrete U channel cess drain on the up side at bridge 8 (B4632 Road bridge at Stanton). The most time consuming item was clearing the cess drain ditches which lead into 11; mainly grass but with overhanging strands of bramble from the hedges. Fortunately both were dry, as was 11B which is usually a very damp spot.

Culvert 11A has two bores; the first is a short pipe from the down side field. Usually the water level is too high to get this picture!

 

This is the exit of the first bore; into the extension of the brick channel constructed in 2019.

Another shot which is only possible with low water levels; the inside of the brick barrel which runs under bridge 11.

The exit of 11B on the up side is down there somewhere! Even with the dry summer the grass has grown well.

Working in a toe ditch at the foot of the embankment does mean some different views of the passing trains. Foremarke Hall on a down train rolls over bridge 11 at Stanton.

 

We also took another look at the water level at syphon culvert 7A. Unfortunately the rain in the past week had caused this to start flowing again, but only slowly. We have decided to bring forward the repair to this, starting next week hopefully before too much more rain falls.

Thursday 6^th October

Back to an almost full strength team today, six again (so only one missing with a valid excuse).

We split into two groups of three. The first group undertook the clearance and visual internal inspection of culvert 11C, just south of the farm crossing between Stanton and Stanway. Once again this required quite a lot of vegetation clearance; as the last time it was dealt with was back in the wet spell in the winter when it was too slippery to cut in many places. This time it was bone dry. They also cut back the vegetation on the slip marker posts on the down side. All are still vertical and inline, so no sign of movement there. However there is plenty of evidence of past badger activity; the up side here is covered by meshing. This seems to have stopped the badgers using the setts that extended under the track.

The down side inlet of 11C. This is an extension pipe installed many years ago when the embankment was widened. The original headwall is some distance in. Eventually we will build a new headwall here!

 

The other end of 11C (up side exit). Original headwall in fair condition, but on this side the expanded embankment sits on top of the headwall.

The group also cleared around the crest manholes on the down side between bridges 10 and 11; and the high mileage access ramp at Stanton yard.

The second group headed to culvert 7A which is just on the low mileage side of the B4632 bridge (8) at Stanton. Using the big petrol powered pump they managed to remove the water from the up side outlet. The smaller electric pump was then used to keep the water level down. This enabled a closer inspection of the cracks in the headwall which is allowing water to leak into the cess. Also it revealed that the depth of silt in the exit chamber is nearly a foot. Hence the plan to dig this out manually were abandoned. Brickwork repairs were made to low mileage end of the up side headwall. The other end requires first an excavation; so next week we will deploy the minidigger for that; also to dig out the silt.

Polly repairing the 7A up side headwall. [Photo by Roger]

 

As the water flow through 7A has not increased significantly, we will now work on the up side of 7A before resuming the culvert/cross drain inspections south of Toddington.

Thursday 13^th October

Only four members of the team in today, despite that it was a very productive day.

With grateful permission from the farmer we were able to get the minidigger to the top of the headwall on the up side of culvert 7A site through the adjacent field. This was a quicker and safer route than using the trackbed from Stanton Yard. Thus we were able to removed most of the silt from the outlet chamber; this was over a foot deep. Then with the small electric pump running we were able to get the water level right down; enabling a thorough examination of the bottom of the bore pipe. This revealed that the water leak is from under the bore pipe. We will obtain some rapid setting underwater cement to repair this, and the cracks in the headwall.

Some very careful digger driving by Jonathan gets the silt out from 7A exit. Bridge 8 (B4632) in background.

With the silt cleared, we can see the gap under the bore.

 

Digger job over; so exit back through the adjoining field.

 

We also used the digger and some hand digging to excavate on the railway side of the headwall to the bottom of the pipe; where the water collects when not being pumped out. This is now ready for filling with concrete – planned for next week. Our master bricklayer completed the repairs to the low mileage end end of the headwall; by replacing the original corner coping stone.

Copings replaced on the low mileage end of the 7A exit headwall.

 

Finally back at Winchcombe we fixed the flat tyre of the efco flail and made some minor adjustments to the dumper. So both of these machines are back in action. The flail had been out of use for nearly two years whilst a replacement throttle cable was sourced from the importers (the machine was made in Italy).