Wailing Wall team members have been busy as ever.
Robin, Arthur and Dave, rebuilding the car park full sign
Mike in the tent where our benches get rebuilt and refurbished
A team effort to get the newly cast lamp standard over to platform 2 north end
A new roof on the signal box wood store
The four latest waste bins have received their final top coat paint finish in Light and Dark Stone. Sixteen (ie four a-piece) six-inch sections of angle Dexion were cut ready to be attached to the bin legs to prevent the timber sitting in moisture.
In the tent the latest refurbished bench got its final coating of Buildings Chocolate Brown and will be put back into traffic on Tuesday on Platform 2. At this time the next bench will be transported to the tent workshop for attention.
And so we have had snow, the kind of snow that is light and fluffy and the individual snowflakes are clearly visible, and the kind that can get blown around in enormous drifts if it is windy. And it has been windy too. So we have had huge snowdrifts that have piled up and made routes unpassable – roads and railways have been closed down until the snow is cleared, which then got blown around again. So for two days parts of the country have been at a standstill.
And here at the railway the effect has been to cause a lot of work to clear the snow from the tracks and the trackpoints so that we could run the weekend service.
And at the stations the snow needed to be cleared from the platforms and the walking routes. A lot of shovelling and gritting and de-icer spraying. And a lot of effort by our brilliant team of volunteers – totally mad but we love it. Well, we must do?
At Bridgnorth the small rostered platform team worked hard from early morning to get the train and its loco and the platform all in a place to keep visitors warm and safe. Our colleagues in the Loco and PWay helped, and while inevitably we had a modest number of passengers, they were welcomed and warm and comfortable.
Sunday morning saw the loco on the train two hours before departure time to get the ‘central heating’ warming the carriages standing at the re-cleared platform (after a further flurry of snowfall overnight).
This was thanks to further team effort clearing the points and the signalling-qualified stationmaster opening the box before normal roster time (hence the duty signalman not yet arrived) to get the loco into position.
Cracking work by our great team of volunteers in the different departments. We must be mad but we must love it?
So the first day of running for the 2018 season has arrived. A nice bit of sunshine and perhaps the first dry Saturday this year? Fingers crossed.
Doing the honours on 7802 ‘Bradley Manor’ were Will Marsh and Gary Williams.
Today marks the start of the new timetable A, formulated following a lot of feedback and analysis of the bad and good parts of previous years.
It has been created in the hope of eliminating avoidable delays and enabling safety-critical staff to have proper rest breaks. It will take a while to get used to, but hopefully it will prove itself in time and will be an enjoyable schedule to operate.
