GWR – Permanent Way Progress - July 2007

On the first weekend of this rather soggy month (7th July), the P-way gang were back at Hunting Butts Cutting (Cheltenham RC) to continue with the new siding being laid for the storage of wagons. The work was completed and saw the existing headshunt disconnected and slewed over to connect with the new siding. Bets were being taken by the gang to see how long it would take before the siding was full of “long term restoration projects”, and the answer was… just two days later! Oh well, that’s what we’re here for!

The following weekend saw the gang back up on the northern extension inching ever closer to Broadway. A total of 241 concrete sleepers were laid out which equated to about 10 panels of track and, at 60ft a panel, that’s 600ft – or 182 metres – towards our goal.

In the week that followed we all heard about and experienced the immense flash flooding that occurred and our railway too suffered the brunt of the weather. On Friday the 20th of July it was reported that a steam fire and drive course had to be cancelled and reports were received of major flooding of the railway’s infrastructure. There was nothing we could do except ride it out and let Mother Nature take her course. On the Saturday morning two members of the P-way department, along with our Operations Director, took a track possession out and headed slowly down the line on the ‘73’ to inspect any damage caused to the railway. Between Toddington and Winchcombe all seemed ok. A few drains were overflowing, but the water level had dropped significantly and was flowing fast and more importantly freely through the culverts around the bottom of the embankments. All was not well at Dixton however. Part of the embankment near the road-over-rail bridge had slipped and was precariously close to the track but not over it. The decision was made there and then not to run trains until this was sorted out. Fortunately being a narrow-bodied design, the 73 was just able to squeeze past the slip and continue towards the Racecourse. Some further storm damage to the formation through Bishops Cleeve was noted but wouldn’t affect any train running. With no further major damage evident, the loco set back to Toddington whilst P-way, along with the JCB, attended to the embankment slip at Dixton.

After moving several tonnes of earth, we moved down to Bishops Cleeve and levelled out the gorges scoured out by the storm and put everything back to normal. Whilst our damage was not on the scale that the Severn Valley Railway have suffered, it is incredible what the forces of nature can do!

In the afternoon we headed up to Stanton to lay out twelve rails (six pairs) on the sleepers laid out the previous week before finally calling it a day. The railhead is now just north of the 8 mile-post. Toddington Station is 9m40ch, so we’re a long way from home – a mile and a half to be exact!

The final weekend of the month saw the gang continue working on the northern extension where the twelve rails laid out last weekend were clipped to the sleepers as well as an additional three more pairs of rails being laid down and secured to the sleepers. Looking back south now, the Stanton Road bridge is almost out of sight whilst looking north the B4632 road bridge is now getting ever closer! All we need is for the bridge repairs to be completed before we reach it, otherwise we’ll have to leap-frog around them!