Thursday 5th March
After many weeks of dull and wet
weather, we certainly enjoyed the sunshine and warmth today. By
mid-afternoon the temperature in nearby Pershore reached 17C, making
this the warmest day so far this year. For the first time this year,
two of our groups loaded deckchairs for use during the morning coffee
break and at lunchtime.
With nine of the team attending, we
formed three groups in a 4-3-2 formation.
The Stowe Road Toddington group was
the group of four - Peter, John, Polly and Nigel. Their work today was
to lay the first couple of brick courses in the new chamber on the
cutting crest by the road. Just like last week, the dry weather meant
that the field drain that runs through this chamber was not flowing;
so there was only a small quantity of water to bail out before
bricking commenced. Again they setup the plant on the old garden
centre site by Toddington Station; but this time as the quantity of
mortar required was relatively small this was delivered to the site
in buckets using the Isuzu pickup.
Dee, Phil and Jonathan formed the group of three. They first travelled to Ski Tyres in
Tewkesbury to collect a number of old worn car tyres. Ski have
donated these to us to experiment with construction of steps on
cutting and embankment sides. This may be a cost effective and
straightforward method of providing some safe access routes for all
the lineside teams. There are a number of videos on YouTube which
show the method, for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTu8NuF6uJ8.
After lunch the group started work on our trial site, the up side
above the River Isbourne bridge. Initial results are encouraging, as
long as we stick to 14 inch diameter tyres. Removing tree and bush roots proved to
be the trickiest part of the operation.
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| First four tyres inserted at the bottom of the steps - will need a little more infill from the used ballast pile. [Photo by Jonathan] |
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| The remaining tyres stacked at the end of the upside siding. [Photo by Jonathan] |
The remaining group of two, Martin (J)
and Andrew, headed south to undertake a number of odd jobs. First was
the regular clearing of the grill on the exit of culvert 24C at
Working Lane. This clogs up with twigs and other debris, today’s
clearing dropped the pooling water by over 6 inches.
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| 24C exit after cleaning. |
Next was a quick
survey of the lower portion of the haul road at Working Lane. Following the
completion of the up side embankment clearance by our contractor,
spotting the areas where water is collecting is a lot easier. They
identified potential sites to insert pipes under the haul road. Then
on to Two Hedges Road at Bishops Cleeve. First job here was another
dye test on syphon cross drain 40A. Since clearing out the inlet a
few weeks ago, and with a fair amount of rain over those weeks, the
increased flow through the syphon enabled a better test than
previously. No dye coloured water was observed entering either the
down or up side cess drains; either immediately after adding to the
inlet or after a couple of hours. So we can safely conclude that this
syphon is not leaking.
Next job was one on behalf of the
bridges team, as agreed at our meeting last week. This was to paint
the safety rails constructed using old steam locomotive boiler tubes
on the filled in accommodation bridge 41. Use of spray smooth
Hammerite paint made the job straight forward. However this used up
two cans, one for each side. Brush painting may be more cost
effective. However, the result does look at lot better than rusty
tubes.
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| Martin (J) painting the up side rails of old bridge 41. |
Final job for the pair was to replace
some concrete cess chamber lids with blue GRP mesh lids. The chambers
on the up side in the shallow cutting just north of Kayte Lane
crossing are prone to close encounters with the robot flail or other
vehicles. A number of the old concrete lids were scrap, either
cracked or having broken corners exposing the reinforcing bar. The
blue mesh is much more visible and durable. We have plenty of these
in stock, but we have now exhausted our supply of bolted brackets.
Hence only three chambers were dealt with today.
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| Neater and easier to spot, cess chamber with blue mesh lid. |
Finally on the way back, the pair
checked on the status of the now notorious Bonsai World inlet stream
of culvert 40B. The wet spell since the beginning of the year has
lead to some seepage from the crest ditch into the French drain; plus
the two twinwall pipes running directly to the down side cess chamber
were running. We are going to need a few more weeks with little or no
rain before we are able to attempt further work here.
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| Martin (J) testing the depth of the water in the Bonsai World crest ditch - and trying to estimate the angle required for an elbow to extend the pipe. |
A tenth member of the team was also
working on the Railway. Roger was attending the monthly H&S
meeting at Toddington.
Wildlife
report:
The
warm sunny day certainly resulted in plenty of bird activity. Very
noticeable was the increase in bird song – but even using a bird
identification app on a phone we did not spot anything new or
unusual. The loudest
birds were a flock of geese in the small holding on the down side
near Two Hedges Road. The best sighting was a
pair of Red Kites swooping
very low near Kayte Lane. Also looking for rodents we noted two
domestic cats heading for the scrub on the down side cutting at Two
Hedges Road. Finally,
at Working Lane the growth of moss on some of the redundant concrete
blocks was very noticeable. This is only a few years growth, so it does show just how clean the air is there.
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| Moss growth on old concrete blocks. |
Definitely
it was Spring today – lots of daffodils in full bloom, and a couple
of magnolia trees in Gretton and Bishops Cleeve starting to flower.
