Saturday 22 September 2012

Saturday 22nd September 2012

A bright sunny day and an opportunity for  a catch up by the volunteers after such a busy week. Eight die-hards were on site at Broadway and three at Ashchurch.
Ashchurch

 Andy, Bob and Steve pressed on with the retrieval of the blue bricks from the floor of the stables. They are all quite usable in the Platform wall  and will top up our stock of blues by 2000.




Here we have a before, during and after sequence of photos from Andy.











Broadway
 On Friday Graham Dykes and Mike Trowman came along to paint the white line on 1B. This helps us with a visual check on the platform slab alignment, aids safety in ensuring volunteers don't step off the edge and lastly and frankly it just looks good! Thanks Graham and Mike  - this is a tedious job and a tricky thing to get right. A perfect job was done.

Today John  C and Jim  H shoveled and levelled the ballast deposited on Wednesday behind 2A. John then rolled it flat.


 A great result. Its not quite up to lampposts socket level, but one more load will see it up to height.

Work continued on the Telephone Box. Roger J gave it its final coats of red paint, inside and out. It looks a treat.













Jo was skiving off telephone box duty, cleaning up two ancient bullhead chairs that he found. He will no doubt give chapter and verse (I hope) in a comment!
Look at the blue sky - it was splendid day.


Lastly, can you spot the brick cleaners among the sea of yellow bags filled with Taunton bricks. Robin asked whether I wanted them finished by lunch or tea!

3 comments:

Jo said...

I found two bullhead chairs - one a GWR two bolt, dated 1911, cast by GK&N. It has the classic square footprint. are these common, with that date?
The other I found buried behind the original platform 2, just next to the old waiting room. It was very rusty indeed, and I can see no letters. It has 3 bolt holes, all off set from each other. The ends are rounded, one scalloped. The design looks older than the 1911 example, and I understand that the GWR used only 2 bolt chairs. I wonder what it is therefore? I will take a close up picture and see if we can post it, as I would love to have it identified. In any case, I think the chair dates from before the year Broadway station was built, so what was it doing there, buried behind the platform? The size looks like 95lb bullhead, maybe less.

richard said...

Could they have been chairs from the contractors construction track? They would have recycled old material for the temporary track

Jo said...

Good idea ! However, I have looked at the pictures in Audie Baker's book, but all the ones in it show contractors with FB rail.
The mystery remains....