One tonne each

Thursday 13^th February

Just one task to occupy the team today – inserting pea gravel and other small aggregate into the bottom of the hole surrounding the new inspection chamber on the outlet (up or Malvern side) of culvert 24A opposite the Royal Oak at Gretton.

With eight of the team in attendance, and around 8 tonnes of material to transport and inset, the average was one tonne each. It certainly felt like it!

Earlier in the week, one of our aggregate suppliers, Elliot’s of Bishops Cleeve, had delivered five tonnes of pea gravel to the bottom of the haul road at Woking Lane. At Winchcombe Yard, we extracted three more part-filled dumpy bags of pea gravel; plus two other bags of contaminated sand and small aggregate. As usual, our plant operator Jonathan loaded these using the telehandler onto the two Transit vehicles, then set off for Gretton. The rest of the team (Dave, Nigel, Martin, Polly, John, Stuart and Andrew) followed in the Transits and the Isuzu pickup. We need the telehandler at Gretton to carry the loaded bags up the haul road; as it is too steep and currently very wet and slippery. A loaded Transit would not reach the top.

Five tonnes of pea gravel awaiting use at the bottom of the Working Lane/Royal Oak haul road.

Haul road transport - telehandler with forks to carry each dumpy bag.

Inlet and outlet pipe of the new chamber surrounded with pea gravel.

We placed all 8+ tonnes of this material in the hole – concentrating on surrounding the plastic twinwall pipes and creating a level surface around the concrete blocks courses of the chamber. We also located some larger and heavier pieces of rock and infill, we carefully placed this on top of the pea gravel at the edge of the hole nearest the running line.

After 8+ tonnes of small infill and some of the larger items; the chamber is hole is ready for the excavated material to be replaced.

Just one other subsidiary task, was the use of the electric breaker to break up the sections of the old brick headwall removed a few weeks ago. Dave, Nigel and Polly did the honours for this. We also collected as much broken bricks from the debris pile – old brick is not good for infill as it will eventually crumble leaving voids. We transported all the old broken bricks back to the yard at Winchcombe. There is now quite a quantity of broken brick there, the plan is to call in a contractor to crush it all and to spread the crushing around the down side yard, hopefully eliminating the puddles.

One wall broken up and bagged, one to go. All the workers on coffee break - inside the vehicles!

 

The final task at Gretton was to place a blue mesh lid on top of the new chamber; temporarily covered with some ply wood to prevent material from entering when the rest of the hole is in-filled. Back at Winchcombe we part filled two dumpy bags with stone that had overflowed a damaged metal cage. That, and another bag of spoil will go to Gretton next week.

From the vacant track bed where the up line was the size of the hole is still considerable.

Before then, we expect one of our contractors to attend with his large digger to replace the material excavated from above the old headwall. Also the spent ballast and other spoil from the track relaying at Didbrook will be transported to Gretton; we will use most of that for the top surface of the vacant up side track bed. Plus some will be used to fill in the worst ruts on the haul road. Finally we will use the two wagon loads of spoil from the Broadway platform 2 building excavations to grade the area at the top of the haul road. Moving the wagons to Gretton and unloading them is now likely to be after the Cheltenham Gold Cup Race days – midweek when no passenger trains are running.

Wildlife report: A gang of people in orange hi-vis clothing does deter most animals from coming too close. So, as usual, most of our observations were of bird life. A pair of magpies on the electric power lines, the resident robin and a low flying Red Kite were all spotted at Gretton. At lunchtime a few crows flew overhead followed by a large flock of seabirds – too small to be gulls, they are most likely one of the species of terns. Weather wise it was not quite such as harsh winter’s day as the last couple of weeks – plus we could just see the Malverns in the distance.