Thursday 26th February
There were two plus points first thing this morning at Winchcombe Yard. First, it was not raining and most of the puddles in the yard had dried out. Second we welcomed a new recruit, Martin (S). Use of a suffix is because we now have two Martins on the team. However no confusion today as Martin (J) was away.
The increase in team size will enable us to tackle more of the tasks on on ‘to do’ list. Even allowing for planned and unplanned absences, most weeks we will most likely be able to have two groups working at two work sites. So it was today.
Also welcomed was a donated Einhell portable submersible electric pump. Not only was this donated, it was delivered to Winchcombe too. Many thanks to the donator from Powick.
Polly, Nigel, Dave and Jonathan worked on the Stowe Road down side improvement. The task today was concreting the base of the new chamber on the cutting crest by the road. The dryer weather over the past couple of days helped here, the land drain the passes through the new chamber was no running. So after pumping the bottom of the chamber out; the concrete could go in. A good stiff (almost dry) 4:1 mix using some quick setting cement was the order of the day. Nigel was chief mixer, working on the old garden centre site by Toddington Station. Jonathan then took the mix in the telehandler bucket to the site; where Dave and Polly carefully guided the placement. The base used three mixes; so about a third of a cubic metre of material.
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| Nigel loads a mix of concrete into the telehandler bucket. [Photo by Dave] |
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| Polly directs Jonathan driving the telehandler to deposit the mix in the chamber. [Photo by Dave] |
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| With the concrete based levelled, Polly takes the final measurements to determine the number of bricks we need for the initial brick courses. [Photo by Dave] |
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| End of day with the site fenced off again, safety marker tape around the excavation and two old barriers placed to stop anything falling down the hole. [Photo by Dave] |
The second group, John, Peter, Ian, Stuart and Martin (S), undertook a variety of jobs at Stanton. First was at syphon cross drain 6C on the low mileage side of Stanton Fields bridge (7). This was to rod out the inlet pipe on the down (Cotswold) side. This was partially successful – a larger diameter and stiffer rod head will be required to finish the task. On the up (Malvern) side, they also rodded the outlet pipe. The exit of this is well outside the railway boundary, and we know that it is partially obstructed. Rodding here confirmed that the obstruction is beyond the boundary. Fortunately 6C normally carries very little water. However, there was evidence that it had been flowing in the recent wet period.
Next was a check at the larger syphon culvert 7A, just on the low mileage side of the B4632 road bridge (8). This is one where the outlet ditch in the adjoining land downstream is in poor condition. So during very wet weather the outlet overflows into the up side cess. Hence the check here to ensure that this had been coping – there was no sign of flooding on the vacant tracked bed on the up side.
Next to be checked was Stanton Aqueduct (bridge 9). The additional French drains added here last year have made an improvement; so too has the piping of the inlet direct into the trough of the aqueduct. Unfortunately there is still some run off from the adjoining fields on the down side that is percolating down the cutting side. Between the aqueduct and Stanton Road bridge, there are three land drains which enter the cutting. As these were probably not flowing, a quick check failed to spot the outlets as the vegetation needs some attention. We plan to pipe or channel these direct into the down side cess – a task that the expanded team will enable an earlier start.
Final task for the Stanton 5 was to check culvert 11A and cross drain 11B to the south of Stanton Yard. Our major diversion of 11B outlet here appears to be 100% successful. Everything was flowing well and there was no evidence of any flooding of the inlet channels and no standing water in the adjoining fields.
Andrew was the tenth member of the team attending today. Most of his day was taken up with a meeting with the Chief Civil Engineer, the Infrastructure Manager, and the bridges and structures teams. An objective was to ensure no conflicts in the planned work of the teams. As we now have more man (and woman) power, the drainage team will be undertaking a few jobs on non-drainage structures. One could be as early as next week.
Wildlife report: One member reported spotting a stoat on the journey into Winchcombe. As we have remarked before, distinguishing a stoat from a weasel when only glimpsed is extremely difficult. Apart from that we had nothing unusual or rare to report. A couple of members remarked that a sign of the increasing hours of daylight is that the dawn chorus now occurs before getting up on working days. Next week we are into metrological spring – so we are all hoping for drier and warmer and importantly sunnier weather. Not a lot to ask, really.
