Preparing for further track laying

Three of us on site today. Enough to get on with the job of preparing the trackbed.

Steve continued with preparing the exact levels between the platforms. He's about 3/4 of the way along now. In any case enough for the Saturday gang to continue track laying from the north. This will be done along alternate sides, so that both lines proceed (almost) in parallel.

We reckon that the first train along here will be the class 73 with Dogfish, but you'll have to wait to see on the day. It was the first train everywhere else, after all.

With enough ballast levelled between the platforms to be getting on with, Steve went to fetch more S/H bullhead rail for Saturday.

An idea we also had was to stack some wooden sleepers here on the recently discovered siding base, nearer to the work site.




The dumper and mini digger spent a large part of the day removing layers of dirt:

- From the siding site, where the bund used to be.
- From a temporary pile we had about half way along, which did not endear us to our engineer due to its weight. All gone again now.
- From along the fence line, where it was felt the road wasn't quite level enough (more dish shaped in fact). Terram will go down here shortly, so it needs to be right.

While we were doing this we had visitors down below.
No rest for the wicked. Someone wants us to spread ballast !
Steve in the 'Southern' tractor-trailer is also on his way south with another load of surplus.

Broadway - station road? Damned SatNav.......

After lunch, almost all the excess baggage on top of the embankment (pile sof spent ballast, rolls of rotten fencing, tree stumps, off cut lengths of rail etc etc) had been removed. We need room for the track, and a road alongside it here.

The newly scraped fence line can be seen in the shape of the dark line in the picture above.

With our removal jobs done, we could start to concentrate on the more interesting task of extending the ballast bed from Childswickham.

If all goes well, we will open up a second track laying front here with concrete sleepers that are not yet on site. Complicated !

We rolled out the Terram (dirty trackbed here) and started to extend the ballast northwards.

All this removal was very time consuming, so not too many photographs of it. More amusing was how to get rid of this huge 'ball of wool' in the form of a giant tangle of old fence posts, bramble and wire.
Steve had a couple of goes at it with the front bucket, but the pile was mightier than he. It wriggled and quivvered.
Undeterred, Steve got out and lowered the forks, and so doing was able to take a stab at it. That worked.

Here it is, all loaded on to the dumper at once. Happy now?

Er.....

Today's interesting find:

A Codd bottle, marked:

GWYDDON VALE

Mineral Water

ABERCARN

J.S. Davies

There is some information on it here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/16498755@N07/23667886036

Given that the firm only traded until 1920, this bottle could actually originate from the opening of the line. It was found in soot/ash ballast near the goods shed.


Tomorrow your blogger and a heritage supporter from Broadway are going to visit the foundry making our replica GWR lamp posts. Purpose of the visit: to hand over this original GWR sign, for 4 replicas in cast iron to be made for the 2 barrow crossings at Broadway.
After an internal appeal, another GWSR station (they will tell you no doubt in their own good time) was also interested and ordered 4. They will be the first BEWARE of TRAINS notices on the GWSR in the correct GWR design. Sourcing the correct kit and organising it is very enjoyable, and there's a great sense of pride when you get it just right. It took us ages to find an example of this sign (for sale at least) but thanks to a sympathetic well wisher we now have one. Result !
We've also been consulting a specialist as to the correct colour for the 1904 door and window frames. The answer was a surprise! You'll have to wait until we cut the ribbon.

Saturday: track laying at Broadway north!