Thanks to the good weather, progress continues to be made steadily, and a further report can now be made after visits by our structures engineer and your scribe today.

Here we go, bridge by bridge:

Bridge 1, Broadway



The last and toughest part of the major works – the removal of the two riveted plates from the Evesham side outer main girder - has been completed.

Removed lower flange from the Evesham side. This was the tough one!

Site of the removed Evesham side flange plate.

Evesham side flange removed, with strike damage

Bolting up the new Broadway side flange

The old plates will be going back to the workshops this weekend, to act as templates for the manufacture of new plates. Bolting up of the similar new plates on the Broadway side is about 50% completed, as you can see in the picture above.

The cutting out of the 19 corroded areas of deck plates will be completed today. The new workshop made plates will be tacked into place, for safety reasons, by tomorrow night. These will all be fully profile welded next week.

 

Shaping the place for a new piece of deck plate.

 The corroded sections of all of the outer joggled stiffeners have been cut away (see photo of the typical corrosion result in the previous post), and most of those on the Broadway side girder have been welded and bolted back into place.

Work on straightening and repairing the impact damage on the minor members is also in progress.

John, our structures engineer, inspects the straightening of a minor frame member.

 A couple of historical items from this 1904 bridge:

BX and B1 are original factory markings from the construction of the bridge. They were found on the removed Evesham side main girder lower flanges, which were removed with considerable effort - see below.

A rivet from the Evesham side main girder

The picture above shows how rivets were removed that refused to yield to a 20 ton press - they were drilled out using a hollow bit. There was quite a sense of achievement on site today, now that this flange plate is off. It proved a tough nut to crack, but we got there.

Bridge 3, Pry Lane

Brick repairs and pointing are virtually complete to this bridge.

Bridge 5, Little Buckland

Excavation of the ground behind the north abutment, down to the level of the original abutment foundations, is now completed. Resin anchored dowel bars, to tie the new concrete to the old abutment brickwork, have been installed. All excavation is now complete at this bridge.

 

Broadway side abutment excavation

The full extent of the crack between the downside wing wall and the Broadway abutment, which we believe moved forwards about the time the bridge was first built, is now clearly exposed.

A large crack has been revealed after full excavation of the Broadway abutment, where the downside wing wall should be attached. This will be tied in to the big concrete block that will be poured here. It's not going to move any further!

Shuttering is being installed behind the Cheltenham end abutment ready for the second concrete pour:

Cheltenham end abutment, ready for the second concrete pour.

Low level shuttering is being installed on the line of the replacement wing wall on the upside, Broadway end, to form the stepped base of the new wing wall foundations. A combined concrete pour of the lowest section of concrete behind the Broadway end abutment and this wing wall, together with the Cheltenham end abutment pour 2, is planned for Monday next. This means a lot of concrete has to be bought!

You can see where the money is being spent, but the share issue is not yet fully subscribed. We are still £42.000 short. Please help if you can. Just fill in a form, send it with a cheque, and claim back 30% from HMRC. It works !

The prospectus with the form at the back can be downloaded here:

http://www.gwsr.com/BridgestoBroadway.pdf

Thank you for your help !