Lots of progress to report ! Your scribes are tireless in their mission to give you the absolutely latest on the three bridges. Here we go:

Bridge 1, Broadway  

Monday & Tuesday was a continuation of the shotblasting and primer painting. From Wednesday onwards it has been all steelwork done there (the steelworkers stayed on bridge 5 all of Tuesday, in the end).

The main work that is obvious is that they have removed the two large damaged plates-

 

Station road side outer girder, before attention from the steel workers

- from the bottom of the downside outer girder. The photographs below show the situation after the outer girders were removed. This is why the 4 props were put in place to support the bridge. 

Girders after removal of lower plate.

This involved unbolting and extracting 160  ¾” diameter bolts holding the two plates onto the bottom angles of the plate girder. The plates are 15” x ½” thick and weigh 175 Kg and 110Kg. respectively. They had to be dragged from under the deck and have been loaded onto the lorry to take back to the workshops. There they will be used as templates to drill the new plates. It has now been decided that it will be quicker to do that in the works than to try and drill all of these holes (plus another 106 in the shorter plate) on site.

 

Outer plates on contractor's van.

In addition a similar operation has been started to try remove the plates from the upside girder. These are still attached with the original rivets, which are proving extremely difficult to remove. Because of misalignment during construction they will not punch out after the head has been ground off. The best way found, so far is to grind off the heads and then drill out the 1 1/2” long piece of shank running through the plates, until the lower head can be knocked off. This takes a very long time!!

They have also been measuring up the 19 pieces of deck plate that need to be replaced, and the many other pieces required to repair stiffeners.  Having tried doing these all on site, at bridge 5,  they have now decided that it will save time, at the end of the day, to make all of these items in their workshops and bring them over ready to fit. Consequently they will now be off site for a week doing all of that work.

Moth eaten deck plates.

 Note how each hole has been defined and numbered, ready for the patches to be made off site.

Bridge 4 Peasebrook farm 

Cheltenham end wing walls.

Brickwork is progressing well and both Cheltenham end wing walls are completed, and approximately 50% of the slopes are completed on the other two. Looks neat!

Bridge 5 Little Buckland

The steelworkers completed the repair works on Tuesday night, but a small number of other minor items have been revealed on closer inspection. Since then the blasting contractor has been steadily working his way through the whole structure with a view to doing the 3-coat finishing paintwork as soon as possible.

In the meantime the excavation work has speeded up behind the Cheltenham end abutment with approximately 65 to 70% of the total dig having been completed. They had reached the level of the existing foundations under the abutment by noon, today, and, at first, it appeared that there was no foundation at all, but that it had been built off a layer of compacted Cotswold stone. Exploration revealed that it was actually rough concrete made using a large Cotswold stone aggregate.

 

A deep hole behind the abutment - now you can see why a lower platform was dug first, so that the digger can reach deep enough.

View of wing wall and abutment - very deep.

Dowel bars have now to be resin anchored into the back of the brickwork, to tie it to the new concrete, and then the lowest section of concrete can be poured, hopefully around mid-week. Because of access restrictions this will have to be placed using a concrete pump.

Excellent progress is being made, but our share appeal is not yet fully subscribed. We are still +/- £50.000 short, so we are hoping that these pictures of progress will stir readers into making a donation, or buying shares under the EIS scheme. It really works - your scribe just got 30% of his purchase money back, just like it said on the tin ! Go for it - when you travel on the first train back to Broadway, you can say - I helped to achieve this !