GWR – Permanent Way Progress - August 2007

The first day of the month saw an unusually busy hive of activity at Stanton for a midweek day as no less than four teams of Carillion welders turned up and achieved sixteen welds on the northern extension – an excellent achievement for one day’s work!

Three days later saw the first Saturday of the month and the gang, meeting up at Stanton Road Bridge, laid out two hundred and thirty one sleepers from the existing railhead towards the infamous B4632 road bridge. After services had finished a handful of cracked fishplates were changed on the main running line between Toddington and Winchcombe as well.

The following weekend (11th August), again we met at Stanton where six panels (12 individual rails) were laid down on the sleepers laid out in the previous weeks. These rails were then clipped up and secured for the northwards (precarious) passage of the P-way train in future weeks. In the afternoon, having run out of rails, a tidy up mission took place with redundant concrete sleepers (rejects for one reason or another), rail cut-offs and general debris all being collected to leave the area free of unsightly mess between the Viaduct and the occupation crossing about half a mile north thereof.

On Saturday the 18th of August another 140 sleepers were laid out reaching the 7m60c milepost and within spitting distance of the B4632 road bridge. We now have two choices – stop here and wait for the work on the bridge to be completed and the props to be removed, or leave a gap and continue sleeper laying the other side of the bridge, coming back to fill in the gap at a later date… For the moment though, it looks like we’re going to do the latter.

The final weekend of the month saw the gang continue work on the new turnout just north of the Stow Road Bridge at Toddington. Although the timbers and the crossing were put down in the winter period last year, we had to hold fire until some baseplates were either sourced from elsewhere or cast specifically for us to use. These have finally arrived so we can continue work on this very important part of the northern extension and the Toddington re-modelling scheme.