Saturday 11th January 2014

Away this weekend attending my Granddaughter 1st Birthday party - what a glorious way to spend ones time, if not at the railway.

Jo did his stuff and here is his report:-

A cold but bright day – the opening temperature was 1.5 degrees C. Seven people on site today, with yourself and John C much regretted.

With 2 people on brick cleaning (Robin and Peter K) three more decided to crank up the dumper and find rubble to put behind platform 2b. Having vainly scoured the brick cleaning area for broken bricks, we eventually went down to the Mythe pile and brought 3 loads back. Doesn’t sound so much, but all the little bits of brick were loaded by hand, and when we got to 2B, they had to be unloaded by hand as well, as we can not get the dumper behind the platform wall at the moment.

Brian T, Keith G, Peter K and yours truly did the honours here. Later we fetched a load of Cotswold stone for Vic, who was cleaning up the flower bed, and then we resupplied the brick layers with two dumper loads of blues, which we piled up by the wall and covered with sheeting, so that they will be dry for next Wednesday. After taking Vic’s  ‘spoils’ down to the bonfire site, we engaged in a last job which was to bring a small supply of plinth headers to the signal box site, where we stored them inside the ‘Wigwam‘ to keep them dry.

John B was about too. He removed one of the banners from the bridge, repaired a fence at Childswickham road, and made Marguerite’s shed watertight again. Much hammering from the rooftop! I heard that Marguerite did quite well today, and a generous benefactor acquired one of the big prints that were donated to us. Great stuff, and thank you !

Peter K brought back one of the signal box ventilators, and has done a great job repairing the split that was in the base. He has now taken the other back, also for repair. I have enquired with Andrew whether we are not missing a piece from the ventilators – having seen one at Winchcombe box in situ, I think there may be a third piece that guides the air around the the wooden beam that runs along the apex of the roof.

A final cup of tea at dusk rounded off a great day.