Wednesday 18th October a warm morning with warnings of storm Babet forecast arrive.

                                        A quick sweep out of the Autumn leave fall.

                                            

Then time to get tarted with a galvanised GWR bucket in need of attention but only started today

                        Greg has salvaged more brass and copper from the skip to be weighed in.

He has also being busy repairing the dash to screen metal on the 2T 3CWT Morris this means the windscreens can be refitted before the winter sets in.

The track side lamp hut needed finishing off on the left side and front.

                                            The final piece of the left lower repair is in.

                                                

        The it was cut out the rot on the right corner and bend a new sheet to go around the corner this showed the bottom was a few inches out so needed clamping and pulling into the frame

                                                    

Two 5" X 5" timbers a brick and lump of concrete were used to stop and deflection of the frame when tightening the clamp..

                                                    

It was then on to the final corner where the door hinges are mounted the cross bar was fitted using hot rivets one of which had rotted out and sheared off. This was going to be an easy job but a hot rivet swells in the hole when peened over so knocking out became drilling out

                  

After bending the new piece to have a 90 degree corner it was slid around and down from the inside and new bolts secured the hinges and frame.

                                                

This just leaves the need to source and fit two six foot long angle iron shelf supports on the right hand wall then all metal work is completed these supports will be on the left of the photo.

After finishing the corrugated repairs it was painting time on the interior GWR dark stone on the angle iron and cream om the tin.

 

It is hard to believe it was a damp dark shed with loads of rust that now just needs a final paint as the rain started and a shelf fitting.

 A poignant relic comes home

My good Friend Lyndon Knott met up recently, Lyndon obtained ,marked up , transported and rebuilt, Monmouth Troy station at Winchcombe, he also rescued this hand painted loading sign from the Fruit packing shed at Toddington Station in 1970.

The packing shed was huge and wooden, standing, roughly at the southern end of the David Page Engine shed.

It was long gone before the GWSR arrived.

Lyndon has made a donation, of the sign to us, we are very pleased to be custodians for the next part of it's life.

Toddington was once home to the biggest fruit Orchard in Europe, and the large size of the Station yard, was to deal with  the transfer not only of large quantities of fruit , but jams and preserves made at the Toddington Jam factory, now Orchard Industrial estate.

Several tramways, to pick and transport  fruit, were laid in the west field north of Toddington, along the Broadway road, as well as one, at the last surviving part of the fruit growing industry, at Hayles Fruit Farm.

Toddington Jam Factory, only one small building remains today , hidden on the Orchard Industrial estate.

To see fantastic photos taken from the air in the 1930's please visit the fabulous website, Britain from above, and type in Toddington in the search panel.

This website is superb ,and  well worth visiting to find aerial photographs of locations, that could be  of interest to you, too.

 Both having time away we rescheduled to Friday the 13th a warm dry day despite the usual weather forecast doom.

Due to Autumn and the leaves falling off the trees a sweep out of  Taylors office was needed just to keep things looking tidy.

The Railway Safety Officer had been around and noticed vermin droppings in the pay office so a clean up was required whilst there the Scottish ashtray and the brass key were noticed to be suffering with oxidation so an application of brass cleaning acid a wash off and buff up on the polishing wheel made them shine.

acid applied

                                                        After washing off with water

a quick buff up and ready for display

Then it was time to return to the ex Winchcombe track side shed with some replacement corrugated sheet.

Greg had already cut the right side away above the rot line and started painting the inside.

The new sheet going in had to be in 4 pieces as the later metric sheet does not match the imperial and after 9 corrugations it is 100% out so a bit of work went into bolting together through the side slopes rather then the top of the bend so it pulled the sheets to fit into each other but doing one edge makes them fan shaped so yet more tweaking.

The 2 nd pop riveter failed to release the cut off pins as the first one did but the problem is Chineseum rivets where the jaw gripping them to squeeze the rivets also distorted the pin so they jammed in the tool.

                   So the job continued with 5mm nuts and bolts as we completed side one  35006 the                                     Merchant Navy class pulled out of  Toddington station in clouds of steam.

 

We then decided to do the rest of the rot as the previous repair from years ago had also rotted out.

                                                   

                 

The battery powered angle grinder was getting some use and getting through discs

                   

More mew metal going in but the concrete base had been repaired at sometime and had gone outside the shed line so bolster chisel and lump hammer meant the tin would go in vertical.

            

                                            

                                       The left hand side was next for the treatment

                                 

           

Not quite enough time to finish the job but it is time consuming work however it is looking a lot better than it did the rust has been removed, window repaired and glass reinstated.

 We have been giving some historical railway buildings on the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway some remedial work at the R and A Trust's expense.

We value the significance, and importance, of the story each subject reveals.

The history of everything will become lost over time, it is good to retell the background of these two former Great Western structures.

This Corrugated hut was rescued from Honeybourne West loop in the 1980's, and has been  a store for the Friends of Winchcombe Station for some years.

Recently Malcolm Walker, head of S and T  gave it a repaint, we took a close look at the window, which was covered over with a sheet of plastic coated steel.

We discovered the mortices for 3 glazing bars, in the frame so we made up some new bars, removed the metal sheet, and  re glazed the window,

now much more like it would have been.

The lamp hut situated next to Toddington signal box came from Bishops Cleeve, it was moved by Mike Shorland, the first head of S and T, and general, great guy, he used his yellow Toyota Hi Ace pick up, to move it along the track bed, in the early days.

Used as a store for many year , it was time to give it a restoration.

The roof was too far gone to save, we re roofed it with spare corrugated panels left over from re roofing the Foss Cross waiting Shelter, and repairing the rot around the bottom and giving it a repaint outside and in,

The cast iron window frame had lost the central window glazing bar, I made a new one and re glazed it.

Now painted in GWR light and dark stone, it now ties in with the heritage backdrop.

Finally, I found this cardboard model building in a skip.

Dating back to the 1950s, i thought it had been made from a kit, turning it over it revealed that it had been scratch built from old cardboard packets.

Compare the mind set, of the young person who made it, to the generation of young,

digital gamers, spending their lives, saving us all, from threats that don't exist.

Away in Lincoln on the 3rd October

 Nothing to post so the old signal box at High Street Lincoln