Things have moved on again, and significant new stages have been reached on bridges 2 and 4.

Bridge 2, Childswickham Road

Tramblast have now completed the final painting of this bridge, and it is now nicely protected against the elements for many years to come.

Our structures engineer salutes the quality of the work...

Remarkable now is the fact that you can drive up to this bridge now - see the car in the picture! Not possible unless Broadway bridge is back in action - which it is :-). Your blogger has personally trundled over it in the dumper, in search of Mythe and Paddington bricks to clean.

Bridge 4, Peasebrook Farm

The extra steelwork needed to strengthen the deck of this bridge is now completed, with the twin channel beams all sitting neatly in the “U” shape part of the troughs, each packed up to allow the concrete to flow around and under them. The steel reinforcing fabric is in the process of being laid over the deck area, a tricky task as the sheets are quite heavy and tend to catch on the shear studs fixed to the tops of the troughs lap joints. These studs can be seen more clearly on the upside photo.

RSJs can be seen laid in the troughs

 

Reinforcing fabric being laid over the deck

The next task is to fit the reinforcement cages then install the outer shuttering to each end and then it will be ready for concreting – hopefully later this week.

With things starting to draw to a close and a lot of wet and windy weather about, you'd think there wasn't much to report, but the redoubtable bridges team ploughs on, so that we can give you a further update with progress as follows:

 

The repairs to the steelwork were finally completed on Tuesday and the pictures above show the ends of the deck with new steel welded in.

Roberto Tramontana is now back on site at Childswickham, making good progress despite the rain. The last of the steel repairs have been shotblasted and primed, and the entire bridge now has an undercoat as well. 

Childswickham Road bridge in its final undercoat.

The deep excavation at the Cheltenham end for the abutment wall thickening has been back filled, visible on the shot of the undercoated deck above.

Re-pointed pilaster (well, the other side mostly)

New balustrades awaiting unwrapping

The new parapet steel is also on site and will be fitted as soon as the painting is finished.

As soon as the final coat of paint is on the bricklayers will be grouting under the steel bearing plates and then re-building the ballast retaining walls. The pilasters on the upside have both been re-pointed (unfortunately most of the work is on the non-visible side, hidden behind polythene)

Bridge 4, Peasebrook farm.

All of the steelwork is now on site and the drilling of the deck to insert concrete shear anchor bolts is well in hand. 

Driiling in progress - see also the new hand rails in place.

The specially shaped plates to cover holes right through the trough sides have been welded in where required, seen in this picture.









The handrails have been reattached, following the removal of the concrete fill of the troughing. Now the shuttering is being made to contain and form the end bearings for the concrete to be laid, to form the thicker and strengthened deck.


There's also some news of one of our other bridges, i.e.

Bridge 43, A435, Evesham Road, Cheltenham.

Above are two photographs of inspection work taking place on this bridge, using a rail mounted cherry picker to give the engineer access to the underside.

This was the last of a group of 8 Principal Inspections carried out by our Engineers CH2MHill (formerly Halcrow) over the last 3 weeks. The reports are awaited with some trepidation, following the revelations during the Bridges to Broadway contract !

Too long since the last post, much too long - nine days ! Well, it just allows the contractors to get on with their job, and they certainly have been. Just as well, as it is getting increasingly cold and winter is definitely on its way.
Here is a little round up of the work in progress, bridge by bridge:

Bridge 2, Childswickham Road

Good progress here, and the steel repairs are due to draw to a close tomorrow. Shot blasting of the repaired parts and priming of all of the steel will start on Friday.

Corrosion damage to deck ends on bridge 2. Why so bad? See below.

However the bricklayers have also been in action thickening out the back of the abutments and piers to provide support for the ballast retaining walls.

New ballast retaining walls built.

What appears to have happened is that, because the abutments both lean inwards by approx. 200 mm, the correct position for the ballast wall to fit just under the end of the deck plates, would have been in mid air. The original ones which we removed were set in by approx. 400mm, leaving the steel exposed to corroding weather effects instead of being protected. In turn the overhanging deck plates have rotted much more (see top photo) due to that exposure!

Unfortunately the thicker brickwork that we needed to build from was 1.2m down instead of the 450mm that it should have been ! The two pictures above show the brick raising that was required.

Bridge 3, Pry Lane

No news on this bridge for quite a while, but no news is good news in this case. With the completion of the new timber post and rail fencing up all 4 slopes this bridge is now completed! Another one off the list, two more to go.

Pry Lane bridge from the Cotswolds side - all done.

 Bridge 4, Peasebrook Farm

The first delivery of steelwork and reinforcing has arrived (see above) and installation will hopefully commence by the end of this week.

Bridge 5, Little Buckland

This is now totally complete, and a picture from the Cheltenham end is attached. The ramp is still in place at the Broadway end to give access to bridge 4.

News on the Bridges to Broadway EIS scheme: 
During the volunteers meeting last Saturday we learned that the EIS share issue had now run its full year, and had closed. The result was - a success ! Final applications were still being processed at the time of the meeting (being the day after the final day) but we have achieved the £500.000 target ! Oh happy day. What wonderful shareholders we have. We own this railway together, and we are forgeing ahead together. The mood during the meeting was ebullient as we learned that the minimum required for the bridges of £500k had been exceeded by approximately 10%. This is brilliant. While we don't know the final costs of all the repairs (due to various problems unearthed along the way), the railway is confident that there will be a bit left over with which to start the extension itself, and the first 800m of new rail have been ordered, and indeed now part delivered as well.

Want to know more? We have set up a new Extension blog for this very purpose. You can follow progress here:
http://broadwayextensionblog.blogspot.co.uk/

There is also a link to it on the side of this blog.

Pat yourself on the back, shareholders. What a great bunch of guys you are.