Another fine day

A good day yesterday, with 11 volunteers on site, and a nice warm day with which to get going. The station building is getting into gear now, and the start date for the foundations has been announced: Monday 10^th August.

In the picture above you can see the site of the station building. The foundations have been set out, and on Friday an extra day was put in to remove the fencing along the car park and replace it with Heras fencing all the way round as this will now be a building site. Digging the foundations, and pouring the concrete will take about a week.

 

The old fencing was carefully dismantled and stored on platform two for future use elsewhere.

On Wednesday the first of the natural stone CRC2 slabs was laid on platform 2c and this snapshot shows how much bigger they are than the concrete ones, more than double the length. The lighter area shows the three slabs that were cut to size and laid, while further to the right is a succession of older, smaller slabs, mostly recovered from Honeybourne a number of years ago.

 Further along platform 2 we found Jim digging an exploratory ditch around the remaining foundations of the original footbridge staircase. The support for the lowest tread is just visible, the rest was bulldozed in 1963. Having removed the other block a couple of years ago while digging out the platform foundations, we know that the block is buried about 3 feet deep.

Work on the footbridge continues. Today, the old bolts for the smoke hood straps were cut off. Jim is inspecting one pair; another is visible in the foreground. The smoke hoods had gone a long time ago, but the remains of the straps were still there, and needed to be removed so that we can fit new ones. Real steam engines are due to pass underneath, after all.

  

Inside the centre span we can see a discussion between the three volunteers that worked on it today – Peter, Roger and Brian. Work inside is currently concentrated on the hoops, the lower edge having been given an initial rust removal and coating. This is a noisy, dusty and hot task, but from the primer visible along the inside lower edge, a lot has been done already.

 

On the southern side of the signal box John and Clive made preparations to extend the upper part of the platform edge across the front of it. Sitting on top of the platform is a pile of steel profiles that will support the roof of the tunnel. under the platform, from the front of the box to the trackside lead off bed.

 

 

 

Behind platform 2 Vic and Peter set about exposing the fence line, which is to be assessed for eventual repair.

Finally, a ‘selfie’ from this week’s blogger, who spent the day cleaning the two new GWR lamp posts recently acquired at auction. The Hilti is the perfect piece of kit for this job, as the nail gun is very adept at cleaning out the ‘scallops’ detail around the base, so typical of GWR lamp posts. We need some more of these, so any offers are very welcome; we have already had one very kindly donated to us (from Littleton & Badsey, a fittingly local post). The two we acquired at auction are from Old Hill and Princes Risborough, we were told.