Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining

The last week has seen the Cheltenham Gold Cup take place at Cheltenham Race Course (CRC) and once again the GWSR was hard at work ferrying race goers from what was effectively a "Park & Ride" at Toddington to the race course itself.  I'm sure that we have one or two horse boxes scattered around the railway, but nobody approached us to ferry their horses to the races, perhaps next year. 

For the races, all three of our currently serviceable and on-site locos were rostered on different days. I was unable to be present myself to report on the proceedings however I have borrowed with the owner's permission the following photos that made their way onto a well known social media site.  

For reasons as yet unknown to me, 5542 set off one day with her headcode chalked onto her smokebox door, 5Z10 being the 15:45 ECS move from Toddington to CRC

5Z10, photo courtesy of Phil Grange

Ben had a busy week, being rostered as driver, fireman and guard on different days. 

Phil takes a rest while Ben tries to work out which hat he is supposed to be wearing today, photo courtesy of Neil Carr

The timetable has two trains to CRC and back in the morning, then two trains there and back again in the evening with a long break in the middle.  The long break was ideal for cooking cremating lunch on the shovel.

Phil burns the bacon, photo courtesy of Aaron Smith

A happy crew, Jonathan (l) & Phil, photo courtesy of Aaron Smith.

Also appearing on social media was this photo of the signals south of Cheltenham Race Course station.  Eagle-eyed Steve spotted that it has sprouted a ground signal over the winter break.  It is to call on locos into the nearly finished platform 2 if occupied by stock.

New ground signal. Photo courtesy of Neil Carr

I would normally have been present on Saturday to catch up with what ever was going on around the steam loco dept however on this occasion, one of my nieces had rather inconsiderately decided to get married and worse still, I was expected to attend.  The nearest that the whole affair got to being even remotely railway related was that the groom had worn a hi-viz orange tie. I'm not a fan of ties at the best of times, but a hi-viz tie is the last word in fashion faux pas. Come back flared jeans, all is forgiven!

I'll spare you the wedding photos and skip ahead to Monday, when we had another photo charter running, this time with 2807 on the freight train organised by 30742 Charters.  Once again we had everything in place for a perfect day apart from the sunshine. 

2807 on shed and ready to go

 The weather started off as a light drizzle and was forecast to get worse as the day went on, not exactly what I had been hopping for. Given that the light was going to be poor where ever we went, we just started off by heading up to Laverton and working our way south from there.  The loop at Laverton can pass for a section of double track if you shoot it right, and by dropping the Queen Mary brake van off the back of the train up against the permanent way wagons parked just north of the loop, it formed a pretty convincing recreation of two freight trains having just passed each other. 

Passing freight trains.

 The loop at Laverton is expected to be lifted after this season to move the points to Broadway station and who knows how long the permanent way train will remain there anyway, so this scene may turn out to be a one off.

The next stop was by the aqueduct for a few photos.

2807 from the aqueduct

 When I set up for the shot above, the sky was a flat grey all around, so it didn't matter which side of the line you went as there was no shaded side of the train.  You'll note in the photo above that there are visible shadows, the sun in defiance of the grey skies had managed to illuminate the shot a little, before disappearing again.

From the other side of the aqueduct

We tried a few shots including the aqueduct in the scene

And even at the next bridge south

 After that, conscious that time was moving on, we headed for Didbrook

Still no sunshine, but this angle offers a better view of the freight train

Yet another pan shot

 It was raining pretty steadily by this point, we even took shelter under the Didbrook 2 bridge for a while to let the worst of it blow over.

Again at Didbrook, passing a home signal

 Like an army, a photo charter marches on its stomach, so we headed back to Winchcombe for lunch.  The crew had forsaken the more usual cooked lunch for some toasted pain aux chocolat!

Looks tasty!

 For the afternoon session, in deteriorating weather, we did a few runs past in the station.

2807 passing through Winchcombe station.

 On the radio in the morning as I was driving to the railway, I heard tell of a survey that ranked the red phone box as "The Most Iconic British Design".  Ranked ahead of such things as the Spitfire even. Well I wouldn't go quite so far as to say that, but I was nonetheless pleased under the circumstances to be able to include the red phone box on platform one at Winchcombe in the above composition.  For my money, the 28XX steam locos are more iconic again, but nobody from the survey asked me for my opinion.  Something else that I heard on the radio was that the hobby/pastime that women find most attractive in men is photography.  This amused the other people that I mentioned it to who decided that photographing steam locos probably negated the effect.

Exiting Greet tunnel

Through the square window at Gotherington

Passing through Gotherington.

 By this time, the rain and wind were getting to be unpleasant, and time had marched on, we called it a day and headed on down to CRC to run around and return to our starting point at Winchcombe. In spite of the weather, everybody seemed to have had a good time and hopefully they all managed to get some reasonable photos too.

Thanks to all those involved in making this happen, Jonathan (driver), Clive (fireman) and Ian (cleaner), Bob the guard along with Peter and Dave who split the signalling turn between them.  Many thanks indeed to the team from Carriage and Wagon who checked over the freight train ensuring that it was fit to run and shunting it into order again (I believe that Neil did the shunting, so thanks to him too).  Last but not least, thank you to Martin Creese of 30742 charters and of course all the people that turned up to support the event.

The crew, (l-r), Jonathan, Ian & Clive.

 Once all the other photographers had disappeared at the end of the day, I joined Dave in Winchcombe signal box for a few extra curricular photos of the freight train being returned to its siding.

Dave watches as 2807 pushes the freight train back into its siding.

Waiting light engine in platform 1 before returning to Toddington.

 Ian sent me a few photos taken from the footplate during the course of the day, the next four photos all courtesy of Ian Chilton.

Ready to set off in the morning

Having just passed the gallery of photographers at Greet tunnel

Jonathan at the regulator

Clive taking a break from shoveling

And finally, this coming weekend marks the GWSR's first ever recruitment fair.  If you have the slightest desire to find out more about the GWSR and how you could fit in as a volunteer on the railway, then this is for you.  As part of the recruitment fair, I'll be loitering in the David Page shed on Sunday the 22nd along with a number of other members from the steam loco dept to answer any questions that you may have. Obviously if you want to get an accurate description of how the steam loco dept works, you'd be best advised to come along on the Saturday.

Soggy Matches

An interesting pair of curios to start off with, following on from the photos of the line in the 1950's and 1960's a few weeks ago, I am pleased to be able to present a couple of photos of receipts for goods shipped to Toddington in 1951 and 1952.  I imagine that these are pretty rare survivors and are extremely interesting artifacts from the railway's history.

Invoice of "Forwarded Goods Traffic"

Nearly £92 would have been a considerable sum of money in 1951,

Appendix to Goods General Account

Note that both are on GWR headed forms even though dated in 1951 and 1952 (the railways having been nationalised in 1948).

Both the above photos are courtesy of Donna Ludlow.

Foremarke Hall set off for Tyseley to be reunited with her boiler on Wednesday.  I have photos from two different sources:

Peter had been helping out with the new barrow crossing at Toddington when he noticed Foremarke Hall go past on a low loader:

Steam cleaning the new barrow crossing

First Foremarke Hall set off one way round on the low loader...

...then after a while she is turned around and off she goes again

Apparently the first time round, the driver of the low-loader measured how high Foremarke Hall was once loaded and discovered that she would be too tall for some of the bridges that she had to pass under and so he turned her round the other way so that the cab would be at the lowest point of the trailer and consequently have just enough clearance.  I dread to think what would have happened if he hadn't done that and he had clouted Station Road Bridge at Broadway with Foremarke Hall.  I think it fair to say that words would have been said.

The above three photos courtesy of Peter Gutteridge.

John provide several photos too:

Foremarke Hall in the car park

On the low-loader the first time...

...and once again the other way around.

 John also provided me with some photos showing the progress with Foremarke Hall's boiler at Tyseley:

Much of the backhead firebox outer wrapper removed

New one having been shaped

Ready to be fitted

After fitting

 There is a new ashpan under construction for Foremarke Hall.  The following was sent to me by John:

"New ashpan under construction

It is the traditional flat bottom pan but with improvements by John Hancock

1. The ashpan is narrower at the top just like the hopper pan. This makes fitting and detaching easier as the nuts are outside the ashpan

2. Made of heavier material, 8mm sides 12mm bottom.

3. It has four damper doors in get air into the pan. However they will still be operated by two levers front & back. So the two fronts will open together and likewise the back. (At least that is the plan).

4. There will be hopper doors in the bottom so as the ash can be dumped out. The plan is to use the current rocker arm already fitted to the engine.

5. Once construction is finished it will come to Toddy for us to fit a ashpan sprinkler for which the team is busy procuring some bits.

6. When Tysley are ready it will go there for fitment"

New ashpan

New ashpan

New ashpan

The previous 10 photos all courtesy of John Cruxon.

Leaping forward to Saturday, that was our first operating day of the season and 5542, the Planet's Favourite Prairie had the honour of hauling the trains.

So good to see one of our locos in steam on our line again

10:00 and off she went, bang on time

In the David Page shed, roads 6 & 7 have been emptied of stock and a start made on removing the track

Never seen it so empty

Exposing the sleepers

Ade knocking out the keys

The 4F which is usually tucked away out of sight in the David Page shed is now happily sat on road 2 and is easily visible from the Malvern side of trains leaving Toddington towards Cheltenham Race Course.

First time outdoors for some time for the 4F

 The bricks for 2807's new brick arch were moved to where they would be needed on Saturday and according to Ben's Facebook page, they were successfully installed today and a warming fire put in, ready for the race trains

Gilbert wheeling the bricks towards 2807.

2807 & 7820 bask in the sun, warming fire in 7820

Tim makes 7820 gleam

"Quick, look busy, Ray's here with his camera"

I spent the day needle gunning parts of Dinmore Manor's real tender:

Half way through one side

Ready for painting

The other side being primed

 Later, 5542 returned with her crew after a successful day's work.

Arrived at Cheltenham Race Course

The view from the footplate at Toddington

Dan made a bit of a faux pas during the course of the day. He managed to knock his box of matches into the bucket of water on the footplate. I say "his box of matches", in fact, they were his mum's. Dan removed the matches from the bucket and placed them on the warming tray to dry out, but the combustible stuff on the heads of the matches just fell off, the water having unstuck them. Hopefully Dan's mum doesn't read this blog and won't find out what became of her matches. I wonder if Sunday lunch was delayed or even cancelled because she couldn't light the oven.

The soggy matches

The above three photos courtesy of Dan Wigg.

Ian (l) and Dan with 5542 on the ash pit

Paul (l) and Mike emptying the pit.

And finally, more news on the 2874 front. The trust that is aiming to restore 2874 to working order has had its membership augmented by Sir William McAlpine who has joined as the group's patron. Sir William is a past owner of Flying Scotsman and currently chairs the Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway, the Dart Valley Railway and the Railway Heritage Trust.

"Sir William McAlpine" by DAEaton - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sir_William_McAlpine.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Sir_William_McAlpine.jpg