Limbo dancers required, apply within

The week just passed has seen a very successful series of race trains taking horse racing fans from Toddington to Cheltenham Race Course.  Being a wage slave, I was unable to visit the railway during this period, however survivors amongst the footplate crews involved spoke of freezing conditions, drunken revelers pulling the communication cords on numerous occasions and a particularly inebriated group of Scots who turned up at Cheltenham Race Course station looking for a train home to Glasgow.  One day, when we get our mainline connection at Honeybourne, we'll be able to oblige however they might have a long wait. Paul Richardson has kindly provided the following photos from last Tuesday.

Thawing out the injectors

Thawing out the hose pipes

Frozen cylinder drain cocks

Foremarke Hall and 5542 ready to leave Toddington

Approaching Cheltenham Race Course

Chris on the footplate of 5542

There is room for 2 trains on Cheltenham Race Course station platform 1

Anyway, Saturday morning saw 7903, Foremarke Hall being prepared for a day hauling the steam segment of the blue timetable, unfortunately it also saw a reasonably heavy bout of rain.  Volunteers in the steam loco dept don't let little things like precipitation deter them though and soon enough a fair number of cleaners had turned up and Foremarke Hall was starting to gleam in the early morning light.

Ed decides that the rain hasn't got the tender wet enough yet and gets it even wetter

Polishing wet brass isn't easy, Karl has a brave stab at it

 The crew for the morning should have been Cliff (trainee driver), Steve, (instructor) and Tina (fireman) however a late change saw Ade swap turns on the shovel with Tina.  Sean upon arrival, being unaware of the swap and spotting Ade on the fireman's side of the footplate remarked "You've not aged at all well Tina". 

Ade on the footplate of Foremarke Hall

Sean will of course now be in some serious trouble if Tina reads this.... she punches well above her weight, if not above her height!

Something that caused much comment was that the nice new path to the wood store had been blocked by somebody parking a couple of wagons in the way.

Careless parking

Steve commented that they had been perfectly positioned for limbo dancers to be able to squeeze their way under the buffers.  Not being quite lithe & supple enough for that, I walked round the long way.  Reports that infuriated cleaners were later to be found in the mess coach sticking pins in effigies of the culprits were only a mild exaggeration. I can see that we are going to need to put some double yellow lines alongside this stretch of track.

There was just time for a cooked breakfast in the flag and whistle before the 09:45 departure of Foremarke Hall.  Some people will go to extreme lengths to avoid getting their photos in this blog, Cliff was very careful to keep the cylinder drain cocks open for rather longer than would be considered strictly necessary in the hope of concealing Foremarke Hall in a cloud of steam.

Somewhere in there is Foremarke Hall

 Of course, Cliff needed to close the cylinder drain cocks in time for the collecting of the token from Toddington signal box, so he cunningly hid in the darker recesses of the cab as they went by.

Collecting the token

Lurking just out of sight on the far side of the signal box, waiting for the train to pass was Jeff Lacey one of the steam loco dept inspectors.  The train came to a sudden halt half way past the signal box as the signals were suddenly set to danger.  One of the traveling ticket inspectors on the train was heard to say to somebody else in the carriage that he had seen Jeff Lacey wandering up into the signal box and that he must have instructed the signal man to do that as a test for Cliff.  "Oh no I didn't" came the response from Jeff on the lineside much to the surprise of the TTI concerned.  Apparently the signal man had spotted that one of the carriage doors wasn't quite shut properly (handle up rather than horizontal) and had brought the train to a halt to get it closed properly.

There are still a number of infrastructure projects on the go at the moment.  One of the more pressing ones is getting the ash pits reconnected. Since we have been back at Toddington, the emptying of ash pans has had to take place in the inspection pits which is not ideal.

The currently disconnected ash pit

The points and track leading up to the ash pit need replacing, so various members of the steam loco dept along with a number of the permanent way team set to work removing the old track. At the moment, the ash pit is only able to be used by rubber ducks.

The ash pit's resident rubber duck

So we all set to work removing the life expired track;

Clive couldn't find a shovel to lean on so he made use of a sledge hammer instead

Not to be out-done, Ed leans on a coal pick

Nigel Black deals with some rusty bolts

Nigel maintains a fascinating photo collection on the flickr photo sharing website of the activities of the permanent way dept, which is well worth bookmarking in your web browser and checking up on frequently. 

Rail unsurprisingly is heavy and hard to shift, after getting it out of the chairs the hard way, the permanent way team brought in mechanical aids to remove it.

Shifting track the easy way

 Watch this space to find out when the replacement track is put in place.  You'll find out quicker though if you keep a check on Nigel Black's flickr site. 

The ash pit is of course only part of the story, we are also in the process of constructing a new ash dock to deposit the ash into.  This involved using a fork lift to locate old concrete sleepers into metal frames which had previously been constructed.  Needless to say, the concrete sleepers were not quite all of the same dimensions and some required a little encouragement to fit.

Mark encourages a concrete sleeper to fit

As does Neil

Two sections completed. A few more left to do.

 The day should have finished with a night time photo charter with Foremarke Hall, but disappointingly the charter was cancelled with just a few days notice.  My plans to bring you a taste of just the sort of photos that can be taken at such events have come to nothing.  I'll have to close instead with a shot of Foremarke Hall on her first run of the day across Stanway Viaduct.  Amazingly enough, the sun actually peeped out from behind the clouds at just the right time.

Foremarke Hall on Stanway Viaduct