Finally, the update on bridge 4 that was pending. I had so many updates, that I couldn't post them all at once. I took a holiday, but our structures engineer and George Law didn't ! So here goes with bridge 4.

Bridge 4, Peasebrook Farm.

Peasebrook farm bridge, looking towards Broadway

Before posting the update, I thought you might like to see a picture of what the bridge used to look like. I took this picture in March 2013. It was very ramshackle; the LH handrails had completely collapsed. The farm track underneath clearly hadn't been used for many years.

Peasebrook farm bridge, Sept 2014.

In this contemporary picture, the old waterproofing has been stripped off, and the remnants of the handrails removed. It also became clear that the old concrete on the decking was of very poor quality.

In the picture here, you can see the edge of the bridge where the handrails used to be. It is of a different construction to that at Broadway. The steel is now fully exposed, ready for blasting.

In the background, you can see that the wing walls have already been repaired.

The capstones on the (mini) pilasters are also different, with a cut out for the steelwork. That makes at least three different designs for pilaster cap stones I have seen. At Broadway we have rescued two beautiful (Inscribed!) examples from the Mythe works, but they are too big for any of the 5 bridges to Broadway. What could we do with them?




Underneath the bridge, blast cleaning has started inside a capsule. Not unexpectedly, this has revealed several areas that need attention, all due to corrosion. There are no bridge strikes here !

You can see that instead of a deck supported by I beams, this bridge has troughing. It is seriously affected by rust nonetheless, and we are looking into the best way of rectifying this.

To cap it all, a cracked bearing stone has been found. Damn those 9Fs and their Northamptonshire iron ore trains ! We shall trundle gently at 25mph....

Finally, we were delighted to see that a van had arrived at Broadway this morning with the new handrails for Bridge 4. Shortly afterwards, it was spotted at bridge 5, about to access the trackbed.

As a post script, the contractors arrived at Broadway today with a van to collect 35 cap stones for the wing walls at Bridge 5. Thanks to our magpie like hunting parties, we now have quite a collection of building material and at first I was perplexed as to which stones they wanted exactly. They refused the Mythe large bull noses that we have rescued, ditto the blue edging stones from Avonmouth, and finally they made a bee line for a set of larger capstones that came off the old Broadway horse dock, which is now buried behind platform 1c. Good to see that we were wise to keep them, and that they will be used again just two miles down the line.

Collecting cap stones from Broadway

And here they are, a few hours later, already starting to be laid at Little Buckland:

Broadway end wing wall nears completion.

There has been some neat brick cutting here. You can just see two of the Broadway stones on the bottom left.
The pilaster, top right, is also nearly finished. This was the one found a few yards further up the track.

A bridge 2 report will be published shortly.