GWSR Broadway Developments

Your comment makes no sense in the context of this thread. Did you mean to post here?

Keith

 

It took me about five minutes but I realised eventually! I don't think we need to go over it again regardless, it's in the rulebook and will only be there a year anyway.

 

Had an excellent day out at the railway on Saturday. Made 3 trips up to Broadway (including one on the DMU) and was hugely impressed by what has been achieved there. It really is a lovely railway which runs through pleasant countryside, has picturesque stations, excellent well maintained rolling stock and best of all wonderful, friendly and cheery folk running the railway!
The railway really is an excellent advertisement for the heritage sector.
Andy

 

The Broadway Station blog have provided a link to the very first blog back in 2009 to celebrate its 10th anniversary.

Since discovering this I have been slowly working my way back through the blogs and rediscovering the sense of awe at what the volunteers achieved here. It is a truly amazing journey and I recommend it, even if, like me, you were an early follower..

 

I also went back and re-read the whole saga from the start (I too started reading early - I recall the picture in an early post of a pair of wheelbarrows being used as armchairs); it took several days to do the whole thing! But it did reinforce the impression of what a tremendous accomplishment it was for the BAG volunteers, led by Bill Britton. I too recommend re-reading it.

One question, if anyone remembers the answer: there are many references to bringing concrete blocks down from storage at the north end of the site. There's nothing about where they came from, or how they got there (unlike many other things - red+blue bricks, etc). There's one post which includes an image of the remnants; they're not on pallets, or stacked, so I'm not sure they were bought in, new. Does anyone know? Thanks (I hope!)

Noel

 

They were dug out from the foot of the cutting sides, where they had been placed for drainage during the blanketing exercise in the late 1950s.
It was a bit controversial, but we were told the would be replaced, but they never were.
We had no money in the early days.

 

Well I'm reading through the Broadway Blog from the beginning and have reached May 2013. In hindsight some things have struck me quite forcefully.

The first is what an unsung hero Bill Britton is. Since 2009 he had updated his blog twice or more a week, ably abbetted by pictures from Jo. He singlehandedly gave the GWSR a social media profile it didn't have before and was getting up to 20,000 hits a month. This interest underpinned the launch of the Bridges and Extension Share issues and helped them succeed. Following his example, and adopting the same template, other Departments now have their own blogs. The result is that the GWSR now has the highest social media presence of any Heritage Railway and the benefit that that brings in volunteer support and passenger numbers.

So well done Bill.

The second is that the rest of the volunteers are all pensioners, as am I, with an average age of 65 and that their total number was about 36 with only around a dozen on site at at any one time. And yet;

They built two 700 yard platforms, with 45,000 bricks apiece.

These 90,000 bricks had to be rescued from demolition sites as far afield as Taunton a four hour round trip away.

Each brick taken down and palleted, transferred to site, cleaned and stacked ready for use. Thats thousands of man hours before one brick is laid.

Each platform has to be infilled by brick rubble and ballast and rolled. Each platform is 5ft high and the void 7ft wide times 700ft long.
And there are two. Thats 49,000 square feet of infill.

Also the embankments themselves had to be reprofiled and the spoil from digging out the foundations moved, probably another 12.500 square.
feet.

All this in addition to the actual bricklaying itself with tons of sand and cement mixed.

And I'm only up to 2013.

I don't know about them but I am exhausted !

 

Imagine this ensemble running into Broadway:

 

http://broadwayextensionblog.blogspot.com/2019/04/crash-bang-and-wallop.html?m=1

Some nice touches finally going up !

 

Remember that picture of the plastic leaflet holders from last year? I'm sure forum readers have been able to think of little else since, indeed I have no doubt it kept some up at night such was the strength of feeling displayed at the time...
However, fear not! I can finally put your minds at rest:



Expertly crafted by one of the chaps up at Broadway from an original design I found online, I added the finishing touches this week. Have patience, and things do get done.

 

FS123 did a great job on lettering that.
Chap at Broadway had a router and some scrap hardwood. We showed him a picture of the original, and he came up with a darn good copy. The devil makes work for idle hands.....

Now to swap it for the plastic ones

 

Speaking as one who has twice travelled to Broadway for some clock sign writing, I am very pleased to see this attention to detail.

Any further anachronisms in the cross-hairs for the heritage treatment?

Robin

 

Need to be a bit careful about "repro." even when it is well done, as this is.

 

On one level, the whole Broadway station is ‘repro’ but none the less magnificent. Let’s be careful about those pedantic positions, which I know you love so much...

Robin

 

Thanks for the compliment (I think it was in there ) Presumably with your museum curator's hat on, you'd prefer a date stamp in a discreet place, is that what you mean?

 

I get where Paul's coming from, though for so long as such projects seek to recreate ambience rather than deceive, there's no real problem. Does the superb reconstruction at Broadway include an appropriately inscribed 'foundation stone' to mark this momentous achievement? (I'm sure it does, but can't locate a photo). Of course, when the GWSR's head of steel starts heading north again, in a few years .....

Compare Broadway with Blaenau Ffestiniog, where, over three and a half decades after reopening, the station still doesn't enjoy the standard of facilities one may expect (not all of which is down to funding). Indeed, the upper terminal of the FR (and indeed the Conway Valley line) has been beaten to possessing a noteworthy station building by the loving reconstruction at Tryfan Junction ..... that's Tryfan Junction, where 99% of the sparse local population are sheep, for goodness sake!

 

Yes it does:

(I'm sure @Breva won't mind, it's his picture)

 

It would be nice to do something about this:



Especially since the addition of the superb proper GWR poster boards this really does stick out in my mind. Station staff seem rather attached to those snap board frames but I'm sure it can all be blended in a little better given a little thought. I'm sure when C+W were asked to make this it was described as temporary; worth bearing in mind the period between the construction team handing the building over to the station staff and opening day was very small and they did need things like leaflet holders and noticeboards at fairly short notice.

 

I've got a replacement double poster board cut to size at home, but stopped work on it when I realised the T&G shrinks. I'm going to leave it for a while to season in the garage. In fact there is another of these (equally stuccoed with plastic snap frames) in the booking hall that I'd like to replace, and a third that will go in at the south end of the building, where we left a space for it between two smaller ones that we made. I need to order the wood for all this and then let it go off in the garage for about a year!

I tried to persuade the station staff to replace the plastic snap frames but they are very keen on them. In fact they are everywhere on the railway now. The best I could get was that they might be replaced with wood coloured ones (they didn't realise that this was an option) but I don't think they want to pay.

If we want to replace the plastic snap frames, we'd need to come up with a period alternative, and get the station staff to agree.

There are currently 8 plastic leaflet holders in the Broadway booking office. If I put in the new replica leaflet holder tomorrow (with 8 compartments...), how many plastic ones am I allowed to remove, without getting a complaint?

 

Another development is these boxes, which as far as I can make out have appeared on every platform (here at Broadway)



They have no justification in the history of the station, they were ordered to be made to contain the disabled ramps.

It's a nice attempt to hide the ghastly yellow ramps, but on the other hand the boxes have no apparent function. Some have called them coffins.

I think we ought to give them some ostensible purpose, by writing something on the side (accepting that they are necessary, of which I'm not sure, why can't the ramps be kept in the coaches which they serve?)

I'll throw out the first idea:

Add a rope loop to each end, then stencil them:

303 Lee Enfield Rifles
Worcester Regiment
Mafeking.

How about it? Or do you have a better idea to hide these boxes?