Work starts at Greet.

Friday at Broadway.

A morning of errands in the Transit. First to our friendly joiner at Willersey, then on to Broadway, then to Toddington, then to Broadway again, then back to Winchcombe.

At the end of it we had these tread covers for the footbridge.

They are new, and anti-slip.

Then it was on with the carpentry and associated bits.

Normally Neal is still on the other side, but while some of the bits he was working with are being painted, he made a start on the Cotswolds side.

Painting of bits of timber continued up on the centre span, and outside the containers. There's lots of it, back and forth for fitting, more preservation fluid applied, back for fitting and another cut with the saw etc.

The mornings are still black as ever, but the evenings are perceptibly lighter suddenly. Mid afternoon, which was dark just a couple of weeks ago, still had enough light for carrying on, so three mugs of warming tea were made for the gang to keep them going.

The tea was drunk quickly and gratefully, then straight back to work.

Here you can see that Neal is doing the bottoms along the other side, while John is drilling holes for them along the stringer.

The last picture of the day shows Neal stepping back to admire the day's handiwork. We'd like this all to be finished by the second quarter, but it's hard to put a firm date on it. But we are on the job 3 times a week, so progress is steady.



Saturday at Greet

Off to the new work site outside Greet tunnel!

Dodging the remaining puddles from the amazing downpour Thursday evening, we loaded up two Landies with 'sleeper digging out' tools et cetera.

To the right is the pile of new softwood sleepers that will replace them. But they are here, and we want them there. How is that going to work then?

We set off in convoi to Working Lane at Greet, where we have a new useful access point, a long and very rough track that slowly rises up alongside the high embankment until it reaches the track, near the back of the Royal Oak pub (which we can recommend, by the way, it has a view of our passing trains).

Once on site we split into two teams. Team one was on ferrule replacing duty.

Along this section there are 70 sleepers that need replacing during this low season, and numerous chair screws are either proud, or have missing/ rotted away ferrules, still made of wood from days gone by. Today we use plastic ones.

This chair screw here is a typical example. It's not doing its job of tightly securing the rail to the sleeper.

Chair screws were removed, old ferrules dug out (with some difficulty, the tool provided was not that useful), then replaced with new, and finally the impact wrench followed to tighten everything up again.

Team 1 1/2 was Stevie in the JCB, who worked on his own digging and then dragging out the sleepers marked with a cross a few weeks ago.

The JCB saves us so much work, it's a thankless task digging out sleepers.

Team 2 was on actual sleeper replacement. Initially, and without the vital supply of new sleepers still at Winchcombe, they prepared the empty beds left by Stevie. In the picture above you can see a whole row of them. Team 2 was working from the tunnel mouth onwards.

Eventually there was a toot and we were delighted to see that the C&W yard shunter was bearing gifts: lots of new sleepers on a bogie flat!

Finally we can get to the real job in hand.

'Do you have doughnuts in your canteen?'

The sleeper delivery stopped by Stevie, who you can see exchanging a few kind words with the engine crew.

Shortly after that Stevie manoeuvered himself into position and started lifting off the stacks of new sleepers.

Bob the second man watched, no doubt glad for the opportunity for something different from shunting carriages around the yard.

After a while the constant scraping of ballast, and lifting the weighty impact wrench got to the ferrule team, and we see them here having a secret little rest (team 2 being out of sight around the bend).

As it was a bit cumbersome to return back to the mess coach for lunch, it was agreed beforehand that we would bring a picnic and eat al fresco on site.

It certainly was fresco, there was a fresh breeze, and a black cloud over Breedon Hill slowly came closer and closer and dumped a lot of drizzle on us.

We had nowhere to sit, so lunch for most was taken standing up. Then it was back to work.

We took both Landies down a very bumpy track indeed to the tunnel mouth.

Some weighty items like cast iron chairs and baskets of track fastenings are not ideal for carrying a long way along the track.

Here team 2 was busy dragging in the new sleepers one by one. Sadly you cannot just drag out the old sleeper, and drag back in the new. The bed has to be lowered with hand digging, otherwise the chair will not fit back on top and under the rail.

Teams 1 and 2 now combined and wriggled the chairs back under the rails on top of the new sleepers, then replaced the old ferrules and bolted down the new screws.

In the background Stevie has laid out a whole row of replacement sleepers, each one in its correct spot.

It was nice to see by the way that many of our quarter mile posts are now authentic, with a proper wooden top, cast letters and the whole thing attached to a GWR bridge rail. Hope you guys out there notice them.

Last but not least, we completed the resleepering in the tunnel mouth area with the impact wrench, and in the foreground you can see the glistening sleepers just dragged in and fitted with chairs.

We think we did about a dozen sleepers out of the 70 to do today. That is a very good start, in particular if you consider that team 1 did not help with the actual sleeper work until after lunch.

Back next week. Fingers crossed that it doesn't snow!

Work starts at Stanway

Friday on the viaduct

An early call to arms came, to get an extra day in for lifting the track off the viaduct, in preparation for drainage works to be undertaken on it by a contractor.

Eight volunteers made it, which is an excellent turnout, given the midweek day and short notice.

We loaded a lot of equipment into the two Landies, you never know what you might need, and the Stanway viaduct is kinda in the middle of nowhere. It's a mile from the nearest road, and you can't just go and get the rail saw when you suddenly need it.

Near the viaduct we built up a pallet with sides and trollied it out to the site.

Steve had a good go at releasing all the fishplates, and we were lucky that none of the bolts were seized (we had brought the rail saw just in case).

Nigel provides a helpful boot to stop the bolt heads from spinning. You can't do this job on your own.

A small group went on ahead and knocked out the Pandrol clips. There are over 100 of them in each length, so that's a lot of knocking, then bending down to pick up the loose clips and walk them to the pallet on the trolley.

The viaduct has 9 panels of track on it, and our job was to remove 11 in total, with two extra ones at each end.

The viaduct seemed very long, but the weather got sunnier and sunnier and before we knew it, the de-clipping had reached the far side.

The 60 foot lengths of rail were taken out and stacked at opposite ends of the viaduct.

Lunch was very pleasant. Picnic only, it's a long walk back to transport and then back to Winchcombe. In the lee of the parapet and in the sunshine it's perfectly do-able to sit and eat outside. Unless you sat on a rail; there's a lot of cold built up in a ton of steel and your bottom is not warm enough to absorb it all.

'D' marks the spot - here is one of the drains that the contractor will be uncovering. There's one for each arch, and currently all the drainage pits are buried under the track, which is one of the things that the contractor will remedy. We need to be able to visit the drains regularly and make sure that they are working. As things are today, and because the tops are buried, that is not possible.

At the end of the day we were well over half way, with a second day of work arranged for Saturday.




Saturday at Stanway.

Lots of work to do today, to dry and clear the remaining pieces of track from the top of the viaduct. We've got half the rails still to remove, and all the sleepers.

Luckily the turnout was quite good - 14 of us.

The first thing to do was scrounge round the yard to find all the bearers we could muster, for the 260 or so sleepers we will need to store.

John here already has an armful.

But what are those two gang members doing in the metal recycling skip?

Here we are at the start of the job, lifting up the first of the sleepers at the northern end. We're going to be putting them in two +/- equal piles at opposite ends of the viaduct. That gives us more flexibility when it comes to relaying everything.

We tried a couple of different methods for lifting out the sleepers. This is the 'scoop 'em out' method, where the Telehandler digs in to retrieve half a dozen or so, but all intermingled with ballast.

A cleaner method was to lift them out by hand, and put them into small stacks, ready for the Telehandler to remove. That made things a lot easier for the stacking team. But then again much harder for the lifters, as each of the 260 odd sleepers had to be lifted manually with nips.

Between deliveries, the stackers could ponder the meaning of life. Dave in the distance was picking up the next load with the Telehandler.









Here's the sleeper removal team.

You can see how they pulled the sleepers out with nips, and then stacked them in a small pile in the foreground, for an easy pick up by Dave.

Hard work though.

Having picked up a load, Dave the reversed down the bridge, round the pile of rails and on to the growing stack in the distance.

As the day progressed the sun came out, but the sky remained moody and inky clouds swirled around over the site.

This is the view towards Stanton, where the fresh ballast is stored for the drainage job on the viaduct.

Soon we had a respectable length of cleared trackbed.

The drainage pits of interest to the maintenance job (starting in a week's time) are right in the middle, underneath where Steve is walking here. they are currently buried under the ballast, but were visible when this was double track.

At the southern end we set up the second temporary storage site. Half of the rails have already been placed here, and the second sleeper pile is about to be built a little beyond the stop block on the end of the north carriage siding out of Toddington.

After we had stored about half of the sleepers at the northern end, we moved to the southern end to join the gang there that was also just starting the same job.

It looked for a while as if this could stretch into a third day, but with the whole gang concentrating on the second half of the sleepers, we suddenly accelerated.

We had two teams now on the same job - Dave in the Telehandler and stacking, with a second team lifting out sleepers and making stacks of 8, even 12, for him to take straight away.

Behind us to the north, about 50 sleepers left to lift, and further on, the second half of the viaduct, now completely cleared.

The sky continued to look angry, but it spared us, we remained dry and despite the clouds overhead, often in the sun in the latter half of the day.

The same stretch of remaining sleepers, now looking south. Stevie in the JCB and a team of 4 pull out and stack the sleepers, roughly in the middle of this big, 15 arch viaduct.

Nearly there now, as Nigel directs Dave in the Telehandler to come nearer, so that we can load him up. Then all he has to do is drive it to the storage stack at the south end.

Tim, Pete and Peter enjoy the moment of fame.

And here we are, the last sleeper. We did it after all! Everything removed in two working days. Mind, it won't be that fast when we have to put it all together again.

Now to tidy up and drive home. The sun has dropped behind the horizon, and light will now fade quickly. Just the tools to collect, and the convoy will head back home.

Now it's over to the bridge gang to use the space that we have created for them. We will be moving to the southern end of Greet tunnel for our next project.

Walking is good for you.

Saturday at Gretton

We were filled up with Christmas spirit and food, so it was time for some exercise, and good companionship. Exercise does you good.

We met at Winchcombe, and split into two gangs. One went to load new wooden sleepers on to the bogie flat we cleared last week, while the other team took the two Landies to the southern tunnel mouth to change a cracked fishplate.

Dinmore passes under 3 arch bridge

On the way north from our access point at Skew Bridge we passed the first train south - post Christmas trains are now running to 31.12, and they look quite well used too. It's an opportunity for steam heat and hot chocolate.

The plan was to head back north all along the trackbed from Gotherington to the tunnel.

We had some heavy kit in the back, so transport was most desirable.

We got quite a long way, almost there but for 1/4 mile when rapid progress per Landie was halted in its tracks by 'someone' (you know who you are, Stevie) digging in a signalling cable at the Royal Oak.

Steve had stopped digging this trench when services resumed, but will continue later next week.

The second Landie also stopped of course, and we had to struggle on while carrying the heavy impact wrench, the replacement fishplate and other weighty gear.

Luckily we happened across a wheelbarrow half way, so that was borrowed and used to carry the two heaviest items.

'Track walkers' but they don't usually walk out with pairs of fishplates on their shoulders.

The repair was soon done. If all goes well and the tools are on site, changing a pair of fishplates can take just a few minutes. Not so quick of course if the fishplate is stuck on due to very cold or very hot weather, or a bolt is seized.

We had two steamers out today, and this DMU, which we let pass before resuming our trudge back to the two Landies (and Tony pushing a heavy barrow uphill over ballast).

Dinmore Manor with the first train north from CRC at the Royal Oak.

As the last few hundred yards back to our transport were interrupted by the trench, we waited for the train crossing the DMU at Gotherington, before walking on through the 4ft to the signal.

We then reversed the Landies about a mile along the top of the embankment, pretty high at this point.

That's the hamlet of Gretton up ahead. It's halt was by the tall tree on the right of the track.

There's been a lot of welcome clearance along here, but only along the side of the track where no new housing has been built.

The view from the same spot, but looking back.

As the railway's property line is along the bottom of the embankment, we were surprised to see this Wendy house and fence along the top.

On the right is the site of the former Gretton halt, marked by a wider area of embankment. Part of it has been seeded with grass and shrubs planted.

On an earlier visit last year we saw two children playing here, and on being challenged they vanished back down the slope into a garden.

This property has its own access gate to the embankment, recently rebuilt in steel.

The site of the former Gretton halt gave us the opportunities to turn the Landies around.

Gretton halt must have been quite useful once, as there is a fair bit of housing around it, as well as a church and a pub, since closed.

South of Gretton the embankment slope has recently been cleared by a flail. The machine was still there, working beyond the tree in the distance. The clearance gang was out as well, a great sign of professionalism and enthusiasm.

Not forgetting the drainage gang, out in the same area, and our very own Dave F, who is the track walker for the Winchcombe - Gotherington stretch, and who was out today.

Even the animals were out. Can you see the paw print left by a badger (centre), with some sharp claws at the top, and a soft pad underneath? It was on a badger route that crosses the line.

On the way back we stopped for 9466 as it passed under 3 arches bridge. It was the second steamer out, together with Dinmore and the DMU.

Before resuming our return journey, we waited for the DMU that we could hear crossing 9466 at Gotherington loop. Note the XMAS letters in the route code box.

That was it for the day, just a quick fishplate change, and a further inspection on foot of the rail in the Dixton cutting, where we had a break last week.

Next is our contribution to the Stanway viaduct repair work, which should keep us busy for a few days starting Saturday 4th. After that we will be spot resleepering south of the tunnel, where we marked up the likely suspects  a short while ago, and for which the new, replacement sleepers were loaded on to the bogie flat.