W/E 04th Sept.

Once again, most of our time has been spent at Winchcombe retrieving fittings from outside storage and restoring to working order. Amongst the many items dealt with this time around were a ladder, ladder support and crow's nest for the soon-to-be repositioned W36 on chicken curve.  Before stripping and repainting, the ladder had to be extended by 3 ft by drilling and bolting a straight section from a damaged ladder in store. Once complete, a complete strip and repaint was carried out to the three items. New timbers were cut and treated ready to fit to the crow's nest as the originals had seen many years of weather abuse and had rotted away quite significantly.

Fourteen single / double signal wire castings and the necessary bolts and washers were sorted from store and put to one side for transfer to Toddington (T30) NHS disc signal.

During Friday running, point W11 to the south of Winchcombe failed. M Walker attended, cleaned the detection, oiled and greased moving parts and removed weeds and debris from around the area. Soon back in working order!

W/E 11^th Sept.

Monday to Thursday had Malcolm and Neil working away from the Gwsr.  The rest of the team set about three restoration projects at Winchcombe. Richards C & E prepared the roofs of the two lamp huts adjacent to the signal box and then painted them black. John M cleaned and painted fittings required for signal W34 on platform 1, while John P, Carl and myself erected scaffold around W34, stripped it of all fittings (apart from the spec. plate and arm), removed all traces of paint from the post and brushed on a coat of red oxide…..all before a late lunch. While in the process of removing the old paint, an important visitor to our railway passed by under green flag signalling. A very enthusiastic wave and cheerful smile greeted us from the footplate from our new president, Mr Pete Waterman.

Towards mid-afternoon we returned to apply an undercoat before refitting the various items that we had removed earlier. And Malcolm and I returned on Friday to tighten all the fittings and to test the signal operation. 

W/E 18^th Sept.

Priority this week was to finish the restoration of W34. On Monday the spec plate and crows nest were removed, the post cleaned back to bare metal and painted red oxide. Later in the afternoon undercoat was applied before a visit to Toddington in the railcar to mount T30 disc signal in place on the NHS. Tuesday the first coat of white/black gloss was applied before a trip to Gotherington to remove electric cables from the 'slip' area before the contractors moved in. Malcolm was left at Winchcombe to replace a ten ft section of rusty and twisted signal wire just off the end of platform 1 south.

Wednesday saw the second coat of gloss applied before the fittings were re-attached to the post prior to testing from the signal box. The crows nest has been replaced by a refurbished one from storage to allow the original to be properly refurbished back in the yard. The ladder was then wire brushed and given a coat of red oxide.

W/E 25^th Sept. & W/E 02^nd Oct.

Monday to Thursday of the first week again saw Malcolm and Neil away from the Gwsr, and I was away on holiday for both weeks. Malcolm was on holiday for the second week.  But in the true spirit of a determined S&T gang, the remainder of the team met at Winchcombe to continue with…….you've guessed it, painting! Apart from the usual fittings, a start was made on refurbishing W12 at the south end of platform 2.

W/E 09^th Oct.

With Malcolm and Neil away from Gwsr Monday to Thursday, the remainder of the team get on with more cleaning and painting of fittings during Wednesday.  With the return of Malcolm on Friday, John P helped with the removal of top fittings from W12, followed by sanding down the paintwork (this is a wooden post), prime and then replace the fittings with new/restored items.

W/E 16^th Oct.

The final touches were applied to W12 on Monday, these being the repainting of the finial, touching up of the white gloss scuffed while replacing the fittings last week, and then the rubbing down and repainting of the ladder.

Tuesday and Wednesday were spent sorting the numerous restored fittings from the container/MSC shed and gunpowder van into complete units before lubricating moving parts and replacing any missing split pins, etc. during this sort out, some items were put to one side for the forthcoming restoration of the Toddington bracket signal.

For a slight change of scenery, I have also begun to spend a day or two each week at Broadway helping with clearing the embankments of 30+ years of greenery. Many thanks to all at Broadway for the warm welcome each time……keep those fires burning!

W/E 23^rd Oct.

Malcolm and Neil spent Monday erecting the scaffold around Toddington bracket signal and removing the fittings from T18 doll (signal for platform 2).

Tuesday had a gang of six working hard trying to beat the looming stormy weather that had been forecast for late afternoon.  While myself and John P were stripping paint from the T18 doll, Malcolm removed the rotten timber boards from the bracket platform and Carl, Richard C and Richard E removed the fittings from the main post, rubbed it down and painted with red oxide. By lunchtime, all bare metal had been coated with red oxide while the sky was looking stormier by the hour.

After a short lunch break the new platform timbers were cut to length, drilled and refitted to the supporting metalwork. Once secure, a decision was made to chance applying an undercoat to the doll and main post with the hope any rain would stay off for at least a couple of hours. Unfortunately, by 1545hrs the wind had increased quite dramatically and within 15 minutes it began to rain. Rain-stop-play!

On Thursday, Malcolm and Neil replaced fittings to T18 doll before dismantling the scaffolding and returning to Winchcombe.

Returning to Toddington on Friday with an extra pair of hands in the shape of Martin, the fittings for T9 'call-on' signal were replaced and the ladder repositioned. The post angle cranks for T3, T8, T9 and T18 were refitted to the main post and adjustments made to the detection of points 12A and B.

W/E 30^th Oct.

This week finally saw the new motor point installed for Toddington North siding. With a gang of five on a very wet and windy Tuesday, the ballast was removed from around the timbers to allow drilling and insertion of fixing bolts for 23B detection unit. The same was done for 23A point machine timbers, but in order to fix the point machine level with packing pieces it was found three of the four bolts were ½" too short - replaced on Thursday. The remaining 14 or so signal wire stakes were temporarily positioned in a slight curve from near to the ground frame (soon to be removed) along the trackbed to disc signal T30. Once checked for a smooth line, each was hammered into the ballast before concreting and the fitting of pulley casts and wheels.

Malcolm spent Wednesday sorting, cutting and drilling the various rods and bars required to connect the point machine and detection unit, and Thursday at Toddington with Neil fitting theses in place. Disc T30 was also wired up and tested from the signal box.