Cheltenhams (Three Different Ones)

Yes, I know.  Three different Cheltenhams in one day is just plain greedy, yet that is what came about on Saturday.  Cheltenham number one was the Cheltenham Flyer, featuring a non-stop run by ex-GWR Castle class, Earl of Mount Edgcumbe from Gloucester to Paddington and back. Several members of the GWSR steam loco dept had tickets to travel, including John Cruxon, John Hancock and Steve Burnett. Others of us thronged the lineside to grab photos as she went by, including at least Sean Nielsen, Phil Grange; Andrew Gough and me: 

The Cheltenham Flyer at Sapperton

From Sapperton it was on to Toddington to meet up with the second Cheltenham.  In this case it was the first of our guest locomotives for the Cotswold Steam Celebration Gala which is only a week and a half away as I write this.  I had been expecting Cheltenham to have arrived on Friday, but when I turned up at Toddington,only her tender had turned up. Apparently the main loco being taller wouldn't fit under a number of low bridges that the tender could and therefore had to come via the M4 and M5 to get to Toddington from the Mid-Hants Railway rather than the more direct cross-country route that the tender had taken.  Anyway, a bit later in the day, Movewright International delivered Cheltenham and she was reunited with her tender once more.

Cheltenham being offloaded in the car park

Andrew Goodman directs the offloading of Cheltenham

Neil Carr had a bit of trouble keeping some of the visitors away from Cheltenham as she was being offloaded.  Ben Evason was noted as setting a good example by remaining behind the white line in the car park and is congratulated by Neil:

Neil & Ben

Taking a short break from driving 2807 on one of the service trains, Mike Hoskin pauses to inspect the latest arrival:

Mike Hoskin

Dan Wigg has spent a bit of time manufacturing some Southern route indicator discs for Cheltenham to wear, which he fetched out and tried on her.

Ben and Cheltenham with Dan's route indicator discs fitted

I'm not sure where that particular code suggests that she might be going, but I'd be surprised if it turned out to be the right code for Cheltenham Race Course.  

Cheltenham

A peek inside the cab revealed that it isn't just the shade of green that differs from Great Western practice.  Much fun was had trying to work out which control was which.  Amongst the more curious anomalies that struck me was that she has two pressure gauges and the driver's one was showing a worrying 10 lb/sq in whilst she was sat in the car park with an apparently empty (assuming that my translation of text speak is correct, MT = empty) boiler.

Name the controls

There are some crew familiarisation sessions coming up before the gala, which is just as well.  I'm not quite sure what our firemen are going to make of that Detroit lubricator that has gravitated to the fireman's side of the cab.  In fact I'm not at all sure what many of our firemen will make of having to fire from the wrong side of the cab at all.  It will all be good practice for when 35006 is ready to steam I suppose.

Speaking of 35006, I noticed that she had acquired a nice shiny new plaque under her cab:

35006 Locomotive Company Limited

If you happen to find a Merchant Navy lying around looking lost, you'll now know whose it is and where to send it.

I'm getting out of step here, when I first arrived at Toddington, I had intended to help Chris Bristow finish off the chocolate coat of paint on the mess coach, followed by helping out with erecting a new fence on the West side of the yard.  My apologies to Chris, I was diverted by Clive Norton who needed somebody to take over from him in bringing 5542 into steam for a steam test.  I checked afterwards only to find that Chris had finished the job by himself and disappeared.

Lovely painting by Chris,just needs lining out now

The mess coach now looks immeasurably better than when the refurbishment project commenced, no longer an embarrassment, but an asset.  While Chris was doing that, I got on with bringing 5542 into steam. Ian Carpenter the boiler responsible person, wanted to know when she was off the mark, then 20, 40 and 100 lb/sq in as well as full boiler pressure.  Needless to say she came up just fine and passed with flying colours.

Foremarke Hall sets off, as seen from the cab of 5542

55 on the 55

Blowing off, when she's meant to for once

Once 5542 was in steam, Andrew Meredith turned up to check over the bottom end as part of her B exam:

Andrew Meredith at work on 5542

Andrew later went on to do the same for Cheltenham:

Measuring Cheltenham's vital statistics

After a spot of lunch (well ok then, very late breakfast) in the Flag & Whistle, I set off to join Mark Young and his merry band of men digging fence post holes to the West side of the yard.  The idea is to create a viewing area where visitors for the gala can watch the locos being prepared and disposed at either end of the working day. As a keen amateur photographer myself, I think this is a wonderful idea,  As a volunteer who will have to find a way of digging holes through several feet of ballast and rock to accomodate dozens of fence posts, I'm appalled.  Lets just say that it involves a lot of back breaking effort.  

Ed Brooks & Steve (tractor with auger attachment owner) by the first fence post hole

The idea was to dig manually through the ballast/rock and then use the auger to carry on through the clay layer below.  

At one point we discovered an electricity cable.  At a best guess it was decided that this was the supply to the North Gloucestershire Narrow Gauge Railway.  Should you happen to be a member of the narrow gauge railway and you're reading this on your mobile phone by candle light, then oops... sorry! 

The mystery electricity cable

Ed is brought to his knees by the exertion, Mark and Andrew don't seem to be concerned

Clive helps the auger to dig into the clay

Needless to say, some while later, we managed to break the auger when it discovered rock when it should have found clay. The broken bits will probably be sent over to Rod Minchin in the machine shop to fix/repair/create new parts for:

Rod tries to look enthusiastic about having more things to fix

Once rock/clay had been excavated, we shoveled it into the waiting bucket of the JCB. The best way to make this interesting was to pretend that you were shoveling coal into the loco of your choice. Dan went for the left handed approach in readiness for the three right (as in wrong) hand side fired locos that will be visiting for the gala.

Dan 'firing' the JCB left handed

I tried pretending that I was firing a King by standing 16' away and shoveling. It all fell a bit flat when Steve Oddy remarked "I can take a hint" and moved the JCB nearer to me. It was more like firing a Collett 0-4-2T by the time he'd finished.

Once the JCB bucket was full, we just moved it up the path a bit, found a particularly bumpy bit and filled it in.

Steve smoothing out the path

So far we've only had two of the Cheltenhams.  The third was the Cheltenham Fryer, the occasional evening fish and chip service.  An evening on 2807 in May would normally be a delightful prospect, but as I joined the crew, Ben Evason (driver) and Paul Richardson (fireman) on the footplate, the heavens opened and a torrential hailstorm engulfed us.  The cab on 2807 works just fine at fending off the elements as long as you're traveling chimney first. Tender first is an entirely different matter though, there's nowhere to hide in that cab. The prospect of the tender first run down to Cheltenham quite frankly filled us with dread.  We were informed later that Sean had been laughing his socks off over in the nice dry David Page shed at the thought of us heading out in a hailstorm. 

Paul & Ben putting a brave face on the prospect of getting soaked

 Fortune favours the virtuous however and the skies cleared up before we set off and aside from a slight headwind on the outward journey, all was fine.  Paul made something of a strategic blunder, he kindly allowed me to fire from Toddington to Cheltenham, then he fired Cheltenham to Toddington & then I fired to Laverton and back.  The blunder was that Ben had ordered us all fish and chips, which we collected at Cheltenham.  Consequently Paul was suddenly pitched into firing and I found my hands free just as the fish and chips turned up.

Andy Beale made the journey as a passenger and taunted us with beer

2807 in the waning sun wearing the Cheltenham Fryer headboard

My fish & chips (thanks Ben)

So it was that I also had my hands free to grab a few photos of the return journey to Toddington as well as scoff my fish and chips.  Poor old Paul had to grab his as best he could whilst firing.

Paul admires the sunset

2807's shadow

Approaching Gotherington

Our exhaust trail through Dixton cutting

Ben and Paul on the footplate

We stopped at Gotherington for quarter of an hour on the way back, plenty of time for a few photos and some ice cream (again courtesy of Ben).

The gallant crew

All in all, a pretty good run, no shortage of steam or blowing off and the timetable was adhered to.  All that remained afterwards was to shunt Cheltenham (the loco, not Flyer, Fryer or town) into the shed and put 2807 to bed on the pit.

Ben checking over 2807 at the end of the day

And finally, after taking one photo on Saturday of a certain member of the steam loco dept, I was informed "For heaven's sake don't put that on Facebook, nobody on there knows that I smoke!".  The photo in question has now been safely filed away in the folder called 'blackmail, subterfuge & skulduggery'. A very well stuffed plain brown envelope should ensure that it remains there!

There's no such thing as a free lunch... or is there?

On Saturday, I was rostered as the cleaner for the Elegant Excursions dining train.  The loco being used was 5542, which was also the down for hauling one of the two steam service trains during the day.  My first thought had been to pitch up at 05:30 and help out with whoever was down to clean it in readiness for the first service train however once I had checked the timetable and realised that it wasn't scheduled to be back at Toddington until 11pm, I swiftly changed my mind.  So it was that I arrived at Toddington at the distinctly more civilised time of 10:15, anticipating spending a fair chunk of the day cracking on with the top coat of paint on the mess coach.  As I arrived, the second service loco was just leaving shed, being driven by Ian Butler.  As the current head of department, Ian is always keen to make sure that department members are fully conversant with the rule book and tested me with one of the hand signals as he went by.  I checked later and couldn't find the one concerned in the rule book anywhere.  Perhaps I misunderstood and he was just indicating that he wanted two sugars in his tea, or there again, perhaps he was just predicting the score that he would give my blog article this week, though two out of ten would be rather disappointing compared to last week's eight out of ten.

Ian had just disappeared back inside the cab of WD348 by the time I had my camera out

Anyway, before I could join Chris Bristow in applying the final cream top coat to the mess coach, Ed Brooks & myself were collared by Mark Young who was looking for assistance in tidying up the area by the ash pit.  A small team of people had been in on Friday, and now the extended coal dock and the new ash dock had been concreted and would both be ready for use in a few days once the concrete had fully hardened.

The completed ash dock

The extension to the coal dock

A bit more area concreted over behind the loco sheds.

The team that turned up on Friday to do the concreting comprised of Mark Young, John Cruxon, John Longhurst, Chris Blake, Time Bazeley & Neil Cooper.

The plan now, was to dismantle the old ash dock.  Being built of wooden sleepers, the idea was to separate out those that could be re-used as sleepers from those that were no good. The no good pile would then be further sub-divided into ones that might be OK for use by gardeners who apparently like to have old wooden sleepers in their gardens and those that were too far gone for even that and would need to be disposed of.  Sleepers as it turns out are deceptive, ones that looked perfectly serviceable to my untutored eye were soon rejected by Nigel Black of the Permanent Way gang and few passed the test.

Good pile of sleepers on the right, rejects on the left

The last sleeper that we moved from the old ash dock turned out to the the residence of a large brown mouse, who after a brief hesitation darted off like a scalded cat.... or perhaps more like a scalded cat was chasing it.  No chance to grab any photos I'm afraid. So anyway, we now have three piles of sleepers in different places at Toddington, some of them were a little large and presented something of a challenge to shift.  Mark apparently likes a challenge:-

Mark being challenged by a rather large sleeper

You will notice that the fence posts that were erected last week now have wire fencing attached to them, I think done by the same team of people that did the concreting on Friday.  The fence now extends some way South of the wood store too. 

Fencing to the South of the wood store

Note what I believe to be the remains of a garden shed awaiting being broken up, if so it is probably the one provided by Michael Speake who contacted me last week through this blog.  It will shortly be used to assist some of our locos into steam.  Ed and Cheyenne broke this lot up a bit later and placed it in the wood store.

Eventually all the sleepers by the ash dock along with others scattered elsewhere around the yard were graded and moved to the correct locations.  Now back to plan A which was crack on with painting the mess coach.  Chris had already finished off the right hand side of it, but had to disappear elsewhere, so I picked up and carried on.  I've noted all sorts of odd behaviour amongst the other volunteers since I started this blog.  Some avoid me (even  more than the public at large avoids me), some make comments to the contrary, but quite transparently want to appear in here and one (no names or pack drill) even wanted to check the photos that I'd taken to make sure that his bald patch wasn't visible.  If I had a five quid for every time that somebody had said words to the effect of 'you'd better not quote that on the blog', then I'd be able to afford to buy Flying Scotsman and finish off her overhaul myself.  Never before though had I had any approach quite as transparent as that of the crew of WD348 who having noticed me painting the mess coach as they arrived, sent word that I should bring my camera up to platform 1 where they were currently waiting to head off back down the line again to Cheltenham.  Apparently Ian had written the word 'Fireman' in the soot on the cab roof of the 8F with an arrow pointing to where the fireman should stand in the cab.  I have no idea why this might be considered newsworthy, but I obligingly grabbed a few photos anyway.

Ade knows his place

Ian trying to look serious

George having a relaxed lunch

Mark managed to look cool even on a hot footplate

Cheyenne took a trip out on a later run

Once I had returned to my labours after this brief interruption, I finally got on with what I had intended to be doing. Carrying on from where Chris & Ed had left off earlier, I continued with putting the top coat of cream on the mess coach.  Just the chocolate to do now and the lining then she'll be ready to go.  She is starting to look like a proper coach again at last.

The mess coach is starting to look respectable at last

Rumours that the mess coach will be named 'Tina' in honour of our Facilities Manager remain just that, a rumour, however if she buys the right people (well ok, me) enough beer, then it could conceivably happen.

In a round up of news elsewhere around the department, Foremarke Hall is having a boiler washout and the turn out to the old ash pit is also beginning to take shape thanks to the sterling efforts of the permanent way gang:

Foremarke Hall during her boiler washout

Excellent progress on the ash pit turn out!

One of the PW gang members rather cheekily suggested that the mess coach would look better in blue & grey.... I may just have offered a view on the matter!

5542 appeared back on shed for a quick emptying of her ash pan and then it was off down the line with Paul (driver) and Mike (fireman) for an evening of elegant excursioning. So it was light engine down to Winchcombe where we picked up the stock.

Light engine to Winchcombe

5542 wears the Elegant Excursions headboard, Paul & Mike greet the customers

Then we were off to Cheltenham and back a couple of times at a leisurely pace whilst the diners enjoyed the fine food delivered to their table and the fine views of the Cotswolds and Malvern Hills which glided past their windows.

Me and my shadow.... and Cleeve Hill

Mike looking back for the 'Right Away' from the guard

Paul taking a moment to admire the setting sun over the Malvern Hills

It was I have to say something of a magical evening, with a glorious sunset over the Malvern Hills followed by a clear starlit sky.  Mike was kind enough to allow me to fire the second round trip, which seemed to go off ok, although I had rather more fire than was strictly necessary by the time that we got back to Toddington. It struck me whilst firing, that coal, being black, is rather hard to see at night, you stick your shovel into the bunker door and hope that you come up with something.  There is a clear opportunity here for some entrepreneurial type to invent a form of hi-viz glow-in-the-dark coal for use at night on heritage railways.

Paul, Mike & I were provided with our evening meal sat on one of the platform benches at Cheltenham on the second trip, and jolly good it was too.  I abandoned all my journalistic instincts and just tucked straight in without bothering to take a photo first.  Paul did manage to hold off for long enough to grab a shot to taunt his wife with and after only a small amount of cursing about the fact that our phones being of two different brands were refusing to talk to each other, he eventually managed to send this shot of his dinner to me.

Paul's elegantly excursioned dinner

By the time that we had the diners back to Winchcombe, the washing up had been done, the stock shunted and 5542 taken back to Toddington and safely tucked up in bed, it was about 00:45 and high time that I got myself off home, showered and safely tucked up in bed too.  I was quite glad that I had opted for a later start in the morning.

And finally,  I know many who read this will have seen this already, but just in case, last year Rory Bremner filmed a series on 'Great British Views'.  One of his views was from the footplate of Foremarke Hall as she ran up and down the line from Winchcombe to Cheltenham and back. It was broadcast last week and you can find the film on the ITV website where it will be available until somewhere around the end of May. The crew are Chris Irving (driver) and Paul Richardson (fireman) who both did an excellent job of representing the railway.  The bits of interest can be found from 02:57 until 13:50, so we got close on 11 minutes of coverage.