Well, we are well into the year now and the Christmas and New Year seem a long time ago.
The adapted door from the shop at Alton station which now has glazing inserted in the upper panels was put back in place in the waiting room. Also, a new enamel sign was fitted on the station wall of platform three indicating the waiting room itself. This must be the first time that a sign with this wording has been displayed on this platform for many a year and looks well in-keeping with the traditional scene at Alton. Also at Alton, we have been installing new roller blinds in the signal box. These replace some time expired venetian blinds that were in poor repair and the new ones are neater and simpler to use.
As a winter indoor job, another door has been undergoing refurbishment in the workshop at Medstead. This is the door from the Railway Shop at Ropley in which the lower herringbone style panels had succumbed to the weather. New solid panels have been manufactured and set in which will be more resilient and give longer life to the door. The door has now been re-fitted and ready for visitors. Whilst this job was going on in the workshop new hardwood barriers were made to replace the expired life ones on the slope to the Ropley picnic site. Mortice and tenon joints were made and supplemented with steel plates for strength and they were then given several coats of exterior wood treatment and erected in the original bases.
A ’background’ task, but no less important, has been tackled in the ladies waiting room at Ropley. This was to replace and re-organise the water pipes behind the wall panelling. This area of pipework has given water leak problems recently, mainly due to the standard of copper pipe that was around at the time of the original installation. The pipework has been simplified and better access to the valves made in order to assist in future maintenance. The tongue and groove wall panelling will be adapted to give better access behind and a re-paint of the walls will finish the job off.
In a previous blog it was shown that we erected some gazebos in the yard at Medstead in order to manufacture some replacement balustrades for the footbridge at Ropley. This was to provide an external workspace so that the workshop was not too encumbered by the creation of these large items and other projects had more space. Unfortunately, the severe wind and rain put paid to that cunning plan and the gazebos succumbed to the elements and we have had to transfer the job into the workshop. Whilst this means some neat footwork in needed by those working inside to avoid each other in the constricted space it at least means the job can continue.. Also inside the workshop we have the galvanised steel shoes- fabricated by colleagues in the loco shed at Ropley- for the support posts for the balustrades.
Another metalwork task we have been undertaking has been the fabrication and installation of guardrail barriers for Alresford. These barriers have been erected outside the doors of the Traincare containers at Alresford in order to provide a safety feature for staff/volunteers coming out of the accommodation directly onto the running line at those points and is another step forward in the development of this facility following the re-modelling a couple of years ago.
Bob Brooks
