In Pursuit of GWR Treasure for Broadway

Jo Roesen, like many other BAG Volunteers, is always on the look out for treasure that might be used at Broadway ( or elsewhere on the GWSR) He recently  put in a successful bid on Ebay for a GWR lamppost. BAG Volunteer Terry Andrews, with 2 chums, then took the baton to retrieve the lamppost from Caerphilly, . Here is how teamwork took over:-

Hi Terry,

I have managed to pick up a genuine GWR lamp post on Ebay this morning. It’s located in Caerphilly, about 1h20 mins from Gloucester. We can get it anytime we like, but I am away next week. The location is:  llanbradach caerphilly CF83 , tel. Jonathan on xxxxxxxxxx. It has already been removed from its hole, so no digging involved.

I was wondering if this is something for which we can ask Paul’s help? It is only  2.5m long, but quite heavy, needs min 3 people to handle and 4 to lift, and best to have a HIAB to lift on to a lorry. If it was the 3 of us, we would only need one other person to help us, eg John Simms.

What do you think? If it is do-able for Paul, my next free days would be 8-9^th May, or Sat 10^th if we don’t do Broadway. Or possibly Mon 5^th – I have a Dutch visitor then, but he might be up for it.

Best regards,

Jo

Hi Jo,

We managed to persuade a friend, John Davis, to accompany Paul and I to Caerphilly to collect the GWR Lamp post you had acquired. We started off from Gloucester at about 8.00 am, arriving at Caerphilly  at about 10.10 am and met Brian Davies, who had sold the item to you, at his home. He showed us to his garage where the lamp post was stored.

It had been “planted” in the front garden in the mid 1960’s by the previous owner of the house and has been well concreted in. Brian told us that he had never seen the lamp actually lit and only a short while ago the top section had been stolen. He then decided to dig it up and break it up for scrap, however, he son offered to try to sell it on eBay.

The Lamppost was heavy, but we managed to get it from the garage onto the flatbed  of Paul’s lorry and then drove it back to  Broadway.

Our new “volunteer” John obviously found the work too taxing and promptly fell asleep on the return journey! – so I took his photo (copy attached)!

We arrived at Broadway at about 1.30 pm, having stopped for a short break on the way back at Severn Tunnel Junction, well we are rail enthusiasts. We unloaded the lamp post by the storage containers as instructed and then showed John around the site. He couldn’t believe how much we had achieved and was very impressed.

On our way back, we popped into Toddington and were pleased to see it was a running day, 5542 bringing in the chocolate & cream stock from the Winchcombe direction. We took John on the recent pathway along the side of the diesel shed so he could see the loco’s in the yard.

Whilst there, the Chairman of the owning group of the Class 47’s asked if we would like to look inside the shed, so we jumped at the opportunity.  It’s the first time we had been in there and must say they are great facilities, keeping the locos out of the elements and also being a secure location. The following Loco’s were in the shed: 47376, D1693, D5081, 37215, 37248 & 47105, whilst outside 8274 was having its firebox emptied, and 7820 was present.

All in all, a successful and interesting day, with many thanks to Paul for providing his transport so quickly and John for assisting at very short notice.

I attach a couple of photo’s I took. Hope you have a good holiday and will see you when you get back,

Best wishes,

Terry

Thanks to all concerned - such enthusiasm is at the heart of our Railway.