Tuesday 4 July 2017

Planting a Post

Tuesday 4th July

Off to Broadway again today with only a small turnout. Three of us to start with followed by Steve with his JCB and Neil C after lunch.
We started off at the Route Indicator signal at the north end having loaded the pickup with a heap of aggregate, cement mixer, wheel barrow, cement, etc


We are going to instal a ground signal adjacent to this signal, so a concrete mounting block is required. Some shuttering had been pre-prepared and was positioned after levelling out a base


A good job we brought the mixer - this took 3 large Barrow loads of concrete to fill

 







And then pushed in a template holding four mounting studs. We'll remove all the woodwork next week when the concrete is well set.



While we were here we lashed up a not quite so elegant piece of shuttering to cast a block to secure the bottom of the ladder






A couple of studs attached to the bottom of the ladder will secure it in the concrete




The signal at the end of platform 2 was noticed to have a bit of a lean so we took advantage of Steve and the JCB to give it a pull. He managed to hook his bucket onto the top of the concrete boot while we tamped some ballast in at the back. It now looks perfectly upright.





So. now onto the main event of the day. The planting of the wooden signal post at the southern end of platform 2. A task made relatively easy with the aid of the JCB. First stage to dig the hole - about 4 ft deep


And then lift the post horizontally from its resting place on platform 2  to position its base adjacent to the hole. Then a bit of re-slinging to hoist it up to vertical



 
and manoeuvre it into the hole followed by numerous barrow loads of concrete. 



And posing for the team photo are Neil, Malcolm and Carl. 
I think we got it in the right way round and it looks pretty vertical - let's hope it doesn't move before the concrete sets!! 

Curly

10 comments:

  1. Looks wonderful to me. So nice to see a wooden post. Regards, Paul.

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  2. Replies
    1. Highly unlikely in our lifetime. Should be good for another 50 years. You may have noticed from a previous blog that we fitted a steel boot to the bottom 5ft of this post. It has continuously welded seams to prevent any ingress of moisture and well sealed at the top which will end up above ground level. As a further precaution we have seated the bottom end on some well drained lumps of concrete and stone. So I think rotting is off the agenda for quite a while yet. I note that the upper white portion will need a bit of touching up after its manhandling into the hole to complete its protection from the elements.

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  3. That shut that rotten! bugger up

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  4. Steve did really well to dig the whole for the wooden signal post without disturbing our spear fencing. Saw it yesterday and its quite close! Brilliant job, looks really good.

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    Replies
    1. We had every confidence in Steve - he's a wizard with that machine!!
      Your spear fencing is a credit to you and we promise not to damage it!

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  5. When you've finished at Broadway it would be nice for you to go back and build some proper GWR signal boxes at Gotherington and CRC to replace the current monstrosities!

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    Replies
    1. Whilst we may feel that they are monstrosities and not in GWR style, they are what the local Planning Authority would agree to at the time.
      Mike S

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    2. In fact, there is a style of GWR box that was similar to the so-called monstrosities at Gotherington and CRC. (Do some research on the Net and you'll find out) However, they had certain features that the current boxes do not currently have but might in future. The current 2 boxes certainly look like signal boxes to me and, when I mentioned to some fellow passengers on the train last Saturday about how some people seemed to get apoplectic about these 2 structures, they expressed considerable surprise. The original signal box at CRC was an all wood structure which would have been torched if BR hadn't removed it. Ideally, a box similar to Toddington's or Winchcombe's might be possible in future at CRC but there are other things to spend money on at present.

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