Wednesday 6th November 2013 - Broadway

Unfortunately ( or fortunately considering the weather!) I was away  on an annual  medical MOT (no problems - you'll have to put up with me for a bit longer!), and therefore missed the fun and games today. However I received lots of feedback from those who were there. Here are two reports, the first from Roger B on the  day's highlights:-

Hi Bill

I hope you passed your MOT today.

The main challenge today was the weather, it rained all day.
Given the split between Broadway and Cheltenham, there were 10 people onsite including Julie.
Steve, Gord, & Mike B moved dumper loads of Bricks from north of the site to the Brick cleaning area. They then moved onto moving and rolling ballast behind platform 2.



Platform 2  (4 pm)  rolled and finished - brilliant!
Two things of note (circled) Left - the base of the original footbridge
Right the near finished bricklaying shelter

The two Pete's made great progress with the brick laying shelter, it looks great.
Pete Q confirmed he should finish it on Saturday.

On the brick laying front, Under the cover my garden umbrella I managed to finish the Corbelling on platform 2 section 1, and then completed the Corbelling of two thirds of the first course of section 2, some 80 Bricks in total.
Pete H worked all day backing up on both sections as well as mixing the mortar.

Last but not least the real Heroes of the day were Rod & Terry who toiled for seven hours In the pouring rain cleaning out the (catch pit) drains in the car park, they were dirty, wet through but emerged smiling.

Finally later in the day Ron Brizlin came on site he was as usual a ray of sunshine on a dismal day.

 

In summary a great productive day.

 

And talking of the heroes - from Rod W

Hi Bill,

Couple of pics of the pit at Station Rd end of the car park ditch. Not too good I'm afraid but show what Terry and me got up to today.

We spent all day hacking the undergrowth to get in and then digging out silt and widening and deepening for about 30 or 40 yds. The water was flowing away well from the pit. There is still a lot to do, a lot more hacking to do. We did another stretch close to Childswickham which was dry and got the water flowing, but there is another stretch further on which isn't deep enough. However time beat us, we did clear out where the pipe goes under the Childswickham road before packing up. Terry and I quite happy to see job through over the next couple weeks.

The confluence of 5 drains - none of which are flowing too well!

 

We did unfortunately lose a fitting off the rods trying to rod under Station Rd, but should be able to push it on through if I bring my rods to extend BAGS. There does seem to be a slight blockage under the road but water getting through fine.

See you soon, hope all well with you today, cheers Rod Sent from my Xperia™ smartphone
 

And from Terry:-

I think that Rod will let you know how we got on with clearing around the area where the 5 outlets are.

The good thing was that we didn’t realise that it had rained all day, as most of the time we were under the cover of the undergrowth. We have managed to clear up around the outlet area, which is now very visible. It was pretty hard work clearing out the silt and debris that has accumulated as you had to physically throw the muck up banks that in some places are about ten feet high.

 It would be a good idea, to investigate the flows coming into the catch pit whilst it is accessible, (perhaps Andy P could be persuaded to come along as he seems to have camera equipment for viewing inside pipework) There is a pile of vegetation by the Mythe bricks that will need burning, but it will need to dry out first.

 

Rod and I then started clearing the vegetation going towards Childswickham and also widening the stream. It was running very well at this point, we decided to move further down the stream and all seemed to be running well, although there is a huge amount of vegetation to clear and the stream will need to be cleared out all along its course.

We then came across an area where it looked as if the water was not flowing at all, so cut through the vegetation to get to it, and probably cleared about 20 yards of vegetation and digging out the silt and vegetation, and the water began running again. I think it may have been trickling through under the silt very slowly.

As time was running out, we stopped this work and went to Childswickham Road where there was no flow at all, but a huge build-up of branches and leaves, so we cleared this out and also dug out quite a bit of silt, still no water flow, so we need to work back to the area we were working on before to unblock whatever is the problem. It is heavily overgrown around here and probably needs the brush cutter to cut this back to enable us to reach the stream bed first.

The time flew and we were visited by Roger and Peter to remind us that dinner time, and time to go home had arrived. Altogether we felt very satisfied with our work so far, but there is probably a few weeks more work to be done (which Rod and I are happy to do) to get the stream running unobstructed and the undergrowth cleared. We should have taken some “before” photo’s  to remind us how much had been done!

Best wishes,

Terry

 

How do they do it !