Late arrival at Gretton (updated)

Thursday 22^nd May

After various delays over the past few months, the two wagon loads of spoil excavated from the foundations of the new platform 2 building at Broadway finally arrived at Gretton.

The Motive Power folk shunted the two wagons onto the car park unloading siding at Toddington, in between offloading visiting locomotives for the Cotswold Festival of Steam (the Spring ‘gala’). Then a grab and tipper lorry emptied the wagons. Martin and Peter provided assistance for this. Due to the nature of the spoil and the fact it had sat in the wagons for several months, the spoil from the corners of the wagons had to be manually dug out. Three lorry loads were taken to the top of the haul road from Working Lane, opposite the Royal Oak pub. Here Jonathan was waiting with the telehandler to level out the material once tipped from the lorry. Also Stuart, Dave and Andrew were on hand with shovels and rakes to break up the large lumps of clay and to remove the few bits of brick and concrete. Most of the material went in the embankment hollow between culvert 24A outlet and the top of the haul road; with a bit just beyond (high mileage) of the culvert. The hollow is now less pronounced; however, there is still scope for more infill to complete the levelling out.

Unloading spoil from Broadway via Toddington.

Using the telehandler to compact and level out the spoil.

Job done - telehandler departs.

Whilst waiting for the first lorry load of spoil, Stuart, Dave and Andrew fitted an extra GRP chamber ring to the outlet chamber of culvert 24A. This will ensure that when the vegetation grows taller (brambles have started growing already) the chamber will be readily visible. 

Now proud of the embankment all round, the outlet chamber of 24A.

Despite the dry spell, culvert 24A still had a small amount of water trickling through it. This was all coming from the down side cess near Greet tunnel, this collects a lot of water running of and percolating through Langley Hill. Cross drain 24B was completely dry – so Dave took the opportunity to clear the apron between the railway embankment and the haul road of the moss and weed that had accumulated.

24B apron cleared. [Photo by Dave]

Stuart, Dave and Andrew also paid a visit to Gretton to investigate a report of some culverts being contaminated with foul water. Some evidence was found; which is now with Tewkesbury Borough Council Environment Health and the Environment Agency to investigate further. *Update Friday evening* - Severn Trent Water attended on Friday. They determined the cause was a broken joint in a foul water pipe in an adjoining property. Now fixed.

Meanwhile, Nigel and Polly made a return visit to Didbrook to make the repairs to the broken pipe leading from the down side cess at culvert 16A to the road under Didbrook No2 bridge (16). The small break was fixed with concrete sitting on a saddle made from a half section of a larger diameter twinwall pipe.

Twinwall saddle on the small break; holds the concrete repair. [Photo by Polly]

For the large break, where several section of SGP pipe had completely broken, the repair was mixture of a replacement section of 9” SGP pipe and a new sleeve fashioned from 300mm twinwall pipe. The twinwall overlaps the SGP, with the resultant small gaps plugged with mortar. Finally some spent ballast from the winter relaying work at Hayles Abbey filled in the excavations. Thus a satisfactory completion of a task that has been on our ‘to do’ list for over 4 years! Most of that time was waiting for a suitable dry spell so that the pipe was not running.

Large break repair almost complete; just another barrow load of spent ballast to entirely cover the twinwall pipe needed. [Photo by Polly]

Nigel demonstrates the height of the undergrowth. [Photo by Polly]

Final task for the day was to cut some of the lengths of old scaffold pole to the correct lengths to install as safety markers on the structures between Toddington and Winchcombe which we measured last week.

Wildlife report: Our arrival at the top of the haul road opposite the Royal Oak disturbed a roe deer. We also spotted many rabbits there – so too did a Red Kite circling overhead. We spotted wild garlic in the damp and shade at Gretton; whilst by the haul road there is lots of cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris) and red campion (Silene dioica) plants. Also Dipsacus fullonum, wild teasel, last year’s plants with their dead teasel heads are easy to spot; but this year’s growth without the flower heads takes is not so easy to distinguish.

New teasel plant. [Photo by Dave]

In Winchcombe yard, we noted the house martins were glad of the overnight rain which had produced a few puddles and thus mud for nest building.