Hole again

Thursday 19^th February

Another day when our turnout was ten team members. However, the working pattern was a a little different; with a 6-4 split and the two groups heading in different directions.

The group of four, Peter, Dee, Ian, and Martin were soon away as they required only a few tools. Their first site was at Southam Lane bridge (42). Our lineside clearance contractor had reported some cess chamber lids displaced and fallen into the chambers. These were soon located and reset. Next port of call was the section between Greet Road bridge, Winchcombe (23) and the south portal of Greet Tunnel. Here the task was to survey all the cess chambers, 15 on each side of the line. Some of these received some remediable work around 35 years ago as the Railway reopened south of Winchcombe. They now require some further attention. Surprisingly one or two will just require new lids and a few no work at all. With the Heritage Group rebuilding the platelayers hut on the down (Cotswold) side of the line here, we can not let tatty cess chambers from spoiling the view!

Final task for the southern group of four was back in the yard at Winchcombe. This was to sort out our stock of plastic pipe and fittings. Importantly this involved fastening the coils of flexible small diameter pipe. With perforated and non-perforated pipes of at least seven different diameters, we have at least 14 different types of metric GRP pipes. Plus odd lengths of imperial and SGP. It will be a lot easier to find the correct size for a job now.

A tidy stock of different pipe sizes and types.

The group of six (Jonathan, John, Polly, Dave, Nigel, Andrew) headed to Toddington for another day working on the drainage improvements at Stow Road Bridge. First task was to connect the existing land drain outlet to the to the new long length of flexible pipe running to the down side cess chamber. With the correct sized adapter this was a doddle – well the connection was. Standing on a wet slippery cutting side was not quite so easy!

From Stowe Road bridge, the new flexible pipe and raised cess chamber show how neater and (eventually) drier the down side cess is now. Those S&T cables will not be under water!

The main task was to complete the excavation of the hole for the new chamber at the top of the cutting. We had left this for a week to see how stable the sides of the hole are. As the soil is clay, there had been no collapsing. Even so, we will install some shuttering when we are working in the hole laying the courses of bricks.

Jonathan concentrates on the excavation, whilst Polly, Nigel and John wait for the next deployment of the pump.

The pump in action - this 110v unit makes swift work of emptying a couple of inches of water. 

 

The depth and length of the hole did not require any increase, just the width by a few inches. This was fortunate, this hole is about the largest we can dig using our small mini-excavator. Even so, we needed to hand dig out two of the corners where the excavator arm could not reach, As the field drain that will run through this chamber was flowing steadily, every now and then we had to pump the water out.

Final task of the day is to reinstate the temporary heras fence at the site (complete with Danger Deep Excavation notice) and to place safety marker tape around the excavation.

Once again the weather was not a welcome aspect of today. Even though the light drizzle stopped by mid morning; there was no warmth in the air. The top of the cutting by Stowe Road is a very bleak and exposed spot. However, a welcome aspect was a working day with passenger trains running- our first since the end of October last year. The weather did make for a very atmospheric departure of the first up train from Toddington behind 3850. A big bonus was the ability to obtain hot bacon rolls mid-morning, sourced from the buffet car of the first down train. Conveniently this was routed through platform 2, so almost a direct delivery to our work site. Also, with trains running again, we all were able to enjoy our end of day cup of tea in the Coffee Pot cafe at Winchcombe. Here we were delighted to have a visit from Ian Scholey, the former Infrastructure Manager, visiting the railway with his grand children.

Wildlife report: Essentially a repeat of last week’s report – the damp, dull, grey day again not conducive to wild life observations. The resident robin at Winchcombe Yard kept a close eye on the work with the pipes there. Other than that, the main observation was that more spring flowers are slowing appearing, particularly in the station gardens and other planted areas. We noted crocuses and grape hyacinths in full bloom, and a few daffodils just opening out.