In fog or falling snow...

... to the signal box mess coach you shall go.

The heavy rain when I set off from home on Saturday morning had turned to heavy snow by the time I arrived at Toddington, the fields alongside the B4077 showing as white when the first pre-dawn light eventually filtered its way across the landscape. Minor details such as blizzards may deter brass monkeys, but the volunteers in the steam loco dept are made of sterner stuff and soon a sizable team of people were setting to work on preparing 2807 for the day ahead. The first thing to note is that my less than subtle comments regarding the blocking of the pathway to the wood store last week appeared to have been heeded and no stock had been left in the way.

Path clear of stock, if not snow

Cliff (firing instructor) & Martin (trainee fireman) busied themselves in the cab of 2807... which whilst not affording much shelter, at least offered some warmth when the fire was lit. Everybody else found something to clean, or in the case of George (driver) something to oil up.

It may be snowing, but note how highly that brass safety valve bonnet is gleaming :-)

Ian turned up to help out with the oiling up... like just about everybody else who wasn't in the cab, he had noticed that it was substantially drier and warmer underneath the loco and joined the throng of people under 2807 looking for something to clean/oil in preference to doing something outside where it was cold & wet. I of course felt obliged to check under there in my journalistic capacity looking to report on what was going on.

Ian oiling something under 2807

As has been reported previously, Ian is quite a gifted artist and has now moved on from advanced origami to working with oils... well oil based products at least.

Ian & George... they didn't think that I'd upload this.

Soon Ian was putting his artistic skills to good use in an imaginative way when greasing up one of 2807's buffers.  Unfortunately my camera ran out of film at this point and I am unable to show you the fruits of his labours however all present agreed that they hadn't seen anything quite like it before.

A brief interlude in the snow permitted an al fresco tea break.... Andrew's wife had sent him off this morning with a large fruit cake.

Cake... a rare and very welcome treat

We'd scoffed most of it before we remembered to let Cliff & Martin who were still hiding up in that nice warm cab that it was there. Should Andrew's wife happen to read this blog, we'd all like to pass on our grateful thanks. Even Ed, who ostensibly doesn't like fruit cake was seen wolfing down large slices of it and spraying crumbs liberally all over what had until then been a sparklingly clean 2807.

Cliff & Martin are still sheltering in the cab & missing out on the cake

The big news on the railway on Saturday, was that not only were Rood Ashton Hall & Kinlet Hall double heading on the Mainline from Birmingham to Newport, but that our very own Ben Evason  would be on the footplate firing Kinlet Hall. This was too good an opportunity to miss, so I set off to grab a photo of them passing through Ashchurch on the outward journey.

Rood Ashton Hall & Kinlet Hall at Ashchurch

Clearly I had underestimated the effect of the cross wind on the exhaust and in an effort to get a wider shot of the train, found that I lost sight of most of it.  Andrew & Cheyenne (new recruit) made the better choice in choosing the opposite platform of Ashchurch station to take photos from.

Andrew & Cheyenne on the opposite platform

Back to Toddington, and after a good breakfast in the flag & whistle, it was off to see what jobs needed doing around the place.  Mark Young had sent out a long email of things that wanted doing and even written them upon the notice board in the mess coach. The bad news was that every one of them was an outside job... no mention at all of sitting in a nice warm mess coach drinking tea.  Unable to find something to do that was actually inside the mess coach, we opted to pick the job that was nearest it, so we could make a dash for it if nobody was looking.  The nearest job to the mess coach was clearing the life expired sleepers out of the parlour road, so that is what we did.

Digging out sleepers

Eventually mechanical help was summoned.... note the carefully removed pair of fence panels and the rather less carefully removed fence post.

Taking offence

Still, it certainly made a difference shifting the dead sleepers.

Ed & Sean loading sleepers onto the tele-fork thingy

Elsewhere, Ian set about 'torching the turntable'  (he gave me that phrase for free).

Ian at work, Ed looks on

 Before there is a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth, it was only half a turntable and too riddled with rust to be worth salvaging. When pressed on the matter, Ian described it as "an example of how green the department is in recycling the metal rather than polluting the countryside with unnecessary iron oxide!" 

Further progress was also made in pressing concrete sleepers into service as the wall of the new ash dock.

Ash dock slowly taking shape

Meanwhile 2807 passed to & fro, the icicles dangling from the crew's noses getting longer & longer with each passing. Just for once, I was glad not to be out there with them.

2807 arrives at Toddington

Off to Cheltenham, tender first into the snow

At this point Tina turned up... I lost the plot as to why, I have half an idea that she had got the dates wrong as she was really booked on to fire on Sunday, but I could be wrong. Regardless, Chris Hayes who was down to fire on Saturday afternoon had phoned in saying that he was snowed in where he was and wouldn't be able to make it, so Tina had now volunteered to cover for Chris and was looking for a mug volunteer to help out with the coupling/uncoupling at the ends of the line. Some little while later, it was the turn of yours truly to have icicles growing from his nose.  There's nowhere to hide on that footplate when running tender first into the snow.

Heading off to Laverton

The road under Laverton loop was rather flooded

I was keen to have a practice of obtaining and giving back the staff for the Laverton section along with operating the ground frames as I'd not had the opportunity to do any of these things before.  I thought that it had all gone very well however I learned subsequently that I was supposed to report that the train was complete to the signal box when returning the staff which I failed to do.

2807 heads back towards the stock at Laverton loop

After this, it was tender first from Laverton to Cheltenham... into the snow.  We paused briefly at Toddington to load up the tender with a bit more coal, making use of the recently created hole in the fence.  Nigel Black caught the event for posterity on the  PW gang's website.

As usual, Tina made the firing look easy, even though everybody on the footplate were practically fighting each other to stand as close as possible to the fire and making it nigh on impossible for her to swing a cat never mind a shovel full of coal.

Last trip down to Laverton and Tina has a go at operating the ground frame

Many thanks to Jamie & Tina for allowing me to accompany them on 2807... I think... I'll tell you for sure after the frostbite surgery has been completed. Cheyenne, our newest recruit was on the footplate too, hopefully he enjoyed his day with us and will become a regular and valued member of the steam loco department.

And finally...  I made it all the way to the end of the blog relating events on a snowy day on the railway and didn't mention the phrase 'no room at the inn' or pink furry handcuffs once... Oops!