GWSR Lineside

 A team of four today with Alex, Andy, Dick and me.    The plan was to meet at the entrance to the railway next to Little Smarties Nursery, at Pecked Lane Bishops Cleeve. From there the team went to the Southam Lane Bridge and started work back North clearing around any lineside signs or Cabinets along the way. It was a tad warm for the day and after clearing the Cotswold side away from the bridge we concentrated more on clearing close to the rail.  None of the signs were obscured and Andy and Dick cleared around the Cotswold side of the foot crossing.  Alex decided to push a tree over which was quite impressive.  We may need to dismantle it further on the next visit. There was not much debris left by C&M by the crossing so no fire was deemed necessary for the day but Alex acted as lookout for the team for the day. Lawrence Harvey  Start of day picture End of day pictures   Some passing trains

Five of us today, Alex, Andy, Dick, Katrina and I. We worked between Cheltenham Racecourse Signal box and Southam Lane Bridge. In no specific order: Cleared under the signal wires from the box to each signal and same for point rodding. Cleared back the paths for the foot crossings Removed a few ash and elder saplings  Cleared around the SW sign for the RDA crossing. Cleared back the blackberry at RDA. We did see Railcar 22 leave Cheltenham as we arrived. A few photos attached  and so we can complete the set, also one of 22 at Winchcombe this afternoon with absolutely no editing to remove signals, houses or make it black and white (honest). A work to log for C&M the fence alongside the path on the Malvern side for the Cheltenham foot crossing needs replacing from the line down to the foot of the embankment. There also appears to be a fresh badger set between the RDA crossing and Southam Lane Bridge on the RDA side. Graham      End of day pic

  Cracking day to day  with Alex, Andy, Dick. Paul, Nick, Rachel, Simon and I in attendance. Mission accomplished, we cleared all the bramble trip wires from the end of the retaining wall on Cotswold side all the way to the end of north siding. As we finished before lunch we walked back track side along the retaining wall and checked/cleared as we went all the way back to the station. Graham Leach Site clearance picture

Our team for today consisted of 6 members as we returned to Mrs Townsends for a final tidy up for this summer.  There was no cutting done as the designated task was to tidy up the site. It took 3 trips in the pick up to move all the logs off site and a vigorous raking of the heaped chippings  to make them safe from any internal combustion.  The majority of this material will be reused at the orchard on chicken curve to make the  environment into a natural habitation for wildlife. Our contractors will now close the fence which will make the embankment inaccessible  from this side This is a great pity but at least it can be accessed over the track  thanks to the marvelous clearance done by the team and hopefully we can complete the clearance later in the year.  We will start our summer activities hopefully next week on the same embankment but dealing with some potentially problematic trees on the up side.  The teams have done an impressive  cle...