The work to refurbish the 5 'Bridges to Broadway' has been completed! Our structures engineer and your blogger are happy to report that the last two bridges, Nos. 2 and 4, have been finished to a high standard, and the contractor George Law is about to vacate the site.

Here is a last roundup of the work that was still oustanding:

Bridge 2, Childswickham Road

The ballast boards are now fitted and the ballast has been leveled out.

View of Childswickham Road bridge completed, looking north towards Broadway.

Wing wall with new fencing, looking south towards the sewage works on Pry Lane (Bridge 3)

A minor job that still needs doing is to swap the 'width' restrictions signs wrongly supplied for the correct 'height' restrictions signs. This will happen on Monday.

Our structures engineer then drove gingerly down the trackbed - perfectly possible now, although perhaps not recommended in an estate car - and arrived at

Bridge 4, Peasebrook Farm

Everything has now been completed and the scaffolding has been removed.

From this  view, looking towards Broadway, you couldn't tell all the work that has gone on to remove the old concrete deck, shotblast and paint the steel deck, strengthen it, and replace with new and better concrete. It looks just like a small farmer's accommodation bridge - which it is. But what a lot of work and money went into it!

 The underside is nice and neat, and freshly painted.

The wing walls have been repaired, and the track underneath opened out again.

This last view shows all that is new: wing walls, handrails, pilaster caps, ballast boards, and strengthened deck. Good job well done!

Meanwhile, back at the base, the George Law offices have served their useful purposes, and are ready for removal. This is expected to take place early next week. And not too soon either, because ..... we need the space to put up Marguerite's new shed! Yes, it's going to move a few yards from it's current position, so that the full station footprint is visible, and ready to start work on the foundations for the new station building in 2015. An exciting prospect.

At this point we would like to thank our blog readers for their interest and, for us, their interesting contributions. We are really grateful for all the shares that people bought, which have made this whole, crucial job possible. Now the way is free for rails to be laid!

It is too early to give figures, but we do know that the share issue (more than) reached its target, and that the works came in pretty much around the budget, so there will be a little left over to fund the first purchase of the rails. A big thank you to you all !

Although there will be no further work to report on the Bridges to Broadway - job done - we will keep the blog open for other bridge news, such as the hot item of bridge strikes! We truly hope there will be no more, but you never know. The subject is now being debated by the board, and we are lucky to have a number of directors who are very knowledgeable about the subject, so we are in good hands.

The bridges overhaul nears a conclusion!

 

During our visit this morning there was a little more visible progress to report, although the contractors are now spending quite a lot of time on cleaning up the site, disposing of surplus equipment, fencing and the like – not very inspiring or photogenic work – but necessary as the contract draws to a close.

BRIDGE 2

A view in the direction of Broadway shows that the protective felt and ballast have been reinstated.

Still to do are the wooden ballast boards (awaiting the carpenters), leveling the ballast over the ends, and changing the wasp stripes and height limit sign (supplied by the council), which to our astonishment showed that the bridge was limited in width, not height.

BRIDGE 3

This bridge is now completed, following the addition of the somewhat complicated height warning signs. This is probably the first time that there have been any such signs here since the bridge was built !

The picture above also shows the completed post and rail fence up the wing wall slopes.

 

BRIDGE 4

This too has moved into the very last stages. The deck waterproofing has been completed and the protecting ballast has been laid on top.

The newly applied ballast is retained at the edges with simple flat ballast boards. 

The painting of the underside of the whole deck troughing system has been completed. The infill of the trough that ends with brickwork, as permanent shuttering, can also be seen and this being the final item, the access scaffolding will now be removed.

 

All that was left to be done this morning was the construction of the 4 isolated bases to the end standards of the handrails. The shuttering for these can be seen above and these were to be filled this afternoon. In the same picture you can also see the new capping stones to the stub pilasters that this bridge had. 

A new gate has also been fitted to close off the access from the adjoining farm.

 

The only thing now left is the stripping of the shuttering from the hand rail blocks and the addition of some extra ballast around them and at the deck ends.

 

The very last job is the touching up of the handrail paint, which was damaged slightly when they had to be removed to strengthen the deck.

Other news:

We are heartbroken to have to report that Broadway bridge was hit by a skip lorry at 12.50 on November 26th, while the Broadway gang was at work there. The skip scraped along the underside and damaged the paintwork and bolt ends. The lorry made off in reverse without leaving any details, however, we know the owner and registration number. The police have been informed.

To cap it all, Broadway bridge was hit a second time yesterday evening at 22.30hrs, in a similar way. Again the paintwork underneath was damaged, and one bolt was ripped out. The lorry involved was an articulated curtain sider, and after stopping briefly, again made off without leaving details. It must have suffered some damage, as several pieces of steel were left by the roadside. If anyone can give us more information on this second collision, we would be grateful to hear.

Good news to report this morning - Childswickham Road bridge has reopened to road traffic!

On Wednesday two large lorry loads of ballast arrived, and were unloaded near the bridge, after driving down the trackbed from Broadway station. Due to the wet weather, they could not be spread over the bridge deck, as it had to have a protective textile fitted first, which needs to be done in the dry.

Here is the reason the ballast could not be added immediately - the rolls of textile still need to be fitted. In front is a pile of Cotswold crushed stone, which is for the drainage at each end. The signage had already been fitted.

Thursday was a brighter day, and the contractors were able to fit the textile, spread out the ballast, and with that, the refurbishment was sufficiently advanced for the road to be reopened on Friday morning. The first person to alert your blogger was a Childswickham resident - thank you !

Here are two views of the bridge taken this morning. Signage on, balustrades on, Cotswold crushed stone spread out along the abutment top and part way down the wing walls. Road open and ready for traffic !

One more bridge to go - Peasebrook Farm bridge is expected to be completed within a few days.

Low winter sun is affecting work ! But only for the cameraman... repair work continues steadily, and here is our next update:

Bridge 2, Childswickham Road

The parapet steelwork has now been erected, and the haunching to the ballast retaining walls has been completed (just visible on the photos). You can see how surface water from the deck is guided off and away from the bridge. Not visible are the new road height warning signs which have also been fitted, and the bird netting at the tops of the abutments.

Love the new balustrades!

All things being equal the scaffolding removal may start tomorrow, following completion of which the brick pointing to the abutments can be completed. The end of deck drainage and some fence works also have to be done, together with the fitting of the timber ballast boards and finally the deck waterproofing. Then lastly, the laying of ballast as waterproofing protection. Somewhere amongst that lot the road will be re-opened, it's difficult to predict exactly which day yet.

Bridge 4, Peasebrook farm

The concrete slab was finished last Thursday and the shuttering has been stripped and the site tidied up. Our three photos show shots from various angles. 

With the parapet railings it look rather like a giant double bed!!

We'll take another look later this week to see what happens next.

 

There has been a bit of dialogue between our structures engineer and other engineers reading the blog, which was very enjoyable for all parties concerned.
Following a question raised by a reader about the drip strips we have had added, Bridges Engineer John Sreeves of CH2M Hill has sent us a longer, and very interesting reply which we think will interest our readers. Here is what he said:

During the restoration of these bridges, we became aware of various shortcomings in the original design that were conspiring to impair future durability. Most of the bridge problems are caused by water penetration and poor drainage which we hope to address, along with improved accessibility to some areas for inspection and painting. The brick ballast walls at the deck ends were in such a degraded and collapsed condition that they had to be totally rebuilt. So for the first time since 1903, the ends of the rail bearers and main beams were exposed to reveal extension corrosion. Where the brickwork had been in direct contact with the steel for 111 years, it had not been possible to apply any paint to the interface, which had attracted water through capillary action. The tops of the ballast walls were in contact with the underside of the deck plate, where similar wet conditions prevailed.

As the ballast walls were to be completely renewed, the opportunity arose to make improvements to access and drainage details without in anyway compromising the original design or affecting the heritage of the bridge which we were keen to preserve. To this end, drip strips 25mm x 8mm were welded on to the ends of the deck plates so that water can drain freely off the end of the bridge deck and not percolate along the underside of the deck plate. Furthermore, the addition of a drip strip serves to strengthen the end of the deck plate which is only 3/8” (9.525mm) thick and is quite flexible. It should be appreciated that the deck plates were never intended to carry the weight of ballast, track and live load. In the original design, all of these bridge had directly fixed track on longitudinal timbers mounted over the rail bearers for direct vertical load transfer. The deck plates were simply non-structural coverings over the underlying grillage. Handwritten additions to the drawings show that these bridges together with the others on the railway were converted to ballasted track in 1928, which would have been about the time when the original longitudinal timbers had become life expired. Consequently the additional load applied and flexure has caused fatigue cracking in the plates which we have had to repair.

To ensure accessibility for future inspection and repainting, the ballast walls as rebuilt are not all uniformly 9” (229mm) thick as per the originals. We have notched around the ends of the rail bearers and main beams to ensure a 75mm gap. Also the tops of the ballast walls are kept about 15mm down from the soffit of the deck plate. The intention is that all metal surfaces on the entire bridge shall be repaint-able with at least a fine nozzle spray with the exception of the undersides of the bearing plates. Unfortunately some areas of the main girders remain extremely difficult to access for cleaning and repainting where masked by the pilaster walls, but it should be possible to get a spray nozzle into the gaps in the future. The three-coat epoxy based paint system we are using is the best available that complies with Highways Agency and Network Rail specifications, and a 25 year life is expected.

Further enhancements to durability have been attained by the installation of transverse filter drain pipes at the back of the abutment walls. It had been noticed that seepage through the abutment in the vicinity of the bearing plinths was causing permanent damp conditions and frost spalling. The bearing plinths are highly loaded but surprisingly they are cut from soft sandstone unlike the indigenous limestone of the area. Being highly susceptible to weathering it is essential to keep them dry, so the installation of cut off drains will intercept and prevent rainwater getting to the upper areas of the abutments.

Finally, bird mesh has been fixed to the abutment shelf pockets between the beams as the accumulation of nests, feathers and faeces is very unpleasant and has a deleterious affect on paintwork!

John C Sreeves 

Thank you John !

We've been back to the two bridges being worked on twice over the last two days. There is steady progress!

Here is what we saw:

Bridge 2, Childswickham Road

The gaps beneath all of the steel bearings have been grouted up and the ballast retaining walls are now completed, as shown on the two photographs below.

Looking north, towards Broadway station

Looking south

Note the thicker looking deck plate ends, indicating the drip strip welded on here. This will cause water to run off this side of the ballast retaining wall, also newly installed. No more water running down underneath the girder and causing it to rust!

The lattice parapet steelwork has been made up and delivered. It is expected to go on later this week.

Bridge 4, Peasebrook Farm

Yesterday, the shuttering to the ends of the deck were complete, with the end re-bar cages installed:

 

When the above two pictures were taken, concreting was due to take place early the following morning (12 to 15 Cu. meters expected).

We then went back today, for a follow up picture:

All is ready for concrete

The rebar cages are all in place, and the shuttering has been erected around it. All is ready for the concrete pour.

Because of the size of the slab it was necessary to transfer the concrete mix in using the excavator bucket, as can be seen on this photograph:

 In this last picture, the concrete is being vibrated in. The Malvern side balustrade is already in place.

 Our next report should show the concrete deck in place, and, we hope, the new balustrades at Childswickham Road.