Category: Station News

Well that’s another year over with, Santa has been and gone and the decorations have been taken down its back to clearing the leaves away from the platform embankment, we have already managed to cut back the bushes on the signal box embankment and looks a lot better, but a little more work is necessary there too.

Other News!!

The Gallery page has been updated to include pictures and video’s of the visitors from the Caley Reunion and the Diesel Gala of yesterday.

There is movement on the new signal box for Birkhill with the Winter Appeal 2018 being launched in the latest Blastpipe.

 https://mydonate.bt.com/events/birkhillsb/478518

The ex West Calder footbridge has been painted and taken to Bo’ness ready for it to be shipped up to Birkhill and installed hopefully by the spring and in time for the station’s 30th anniversary

One of the pleasures of volunteering at Birkhill along with the hard graft is being able to get to see visiting engines and the Cala event was one of those pleasures. Below are a couple of pictures taken whilst bulb planting. More pictures will be added to the Gallery page in due course.

Now back to the bulb planting!

 

With an extra layer of clothing work continued on the NB Coach roof protection. The temporary sheets which overlapped each other and so let water through during heavy rain have now been replaced with a full length thick membrane to see out the winter and keep the recently sanded down roof timbers and interior dry until such time the damaged roof supports can be replaced.

Remedial works has started on sections of rotten wood on the outside of the station, the first of the new timber sections have been expertly copied and put in place and once painted everything will look as good as new!

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Autumn tasks commenced this weekend cutting back and deadheading plants & bushes, the cold nights has started to take its toll on the leaf’s but we decided to leave the sweeping up until the majority have fallen (for now at least!).

Another task done was the installation of a couple of period drop lights in the waiting room, the cable will eventually be placed in small boxed conduit to keep everything tidy.

We took full advantage of a glorious sunny autumn day to complete the sanding down of the North British coach body roof and covered it with two generous coatings of preservative. The next challenge is to clean out the remaining items inside the coach so that we have sufficient room to identify a way of lifting the roof section that has unfortunately sagged and led to the water ingress.

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After our exploits at Manuel, we are now back working on the North British Coach Body. All the roof has been cleared of all the old felt, 50% of the old timbers have been sanded down and coated with wood preserver. Temporary lights have been fitted inside the coach and cleared as much as possible of the many years of rubbish dumped inside.  A lot of wood was also present which was identified as being part of the signal-box this has been moved into the storage container ready for when the building of the signal-box commences.

It was flagged up that the access paths at Manuel had become badly overgrown so as we had the tools and where closer to Manuel than the guys at Bo’ness we decided to take a holiday for a few weeks. So armed with strimmer’s, shears, rakes and flasks of coffee, we have spent the last few shifts cutting back and removing what felt like years of growth.  The steps up to the main road where particularly overgrown and needed a good couple of shifts to make good again but now look a lot better now

We are not sure we have by default adopted Manuel into the Birkhill Group activities but it was a nice change to take the train up and have a change of scenery and will look at slotting in further trips to keep on top of things!

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Work continued on stripping back the roof of the North British coach body, most of the old felt protection has now been scraped away. It was nice to find that vast areas the wood is in very good condition, considering it is over a 100 years old!

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After visually inspecting the inside of the coach it became quickly apparent that years of being brushed by the tree branches the roof at the centre was in a poor state and make the coach water tight again was a priority before the autumn and winter months.  Work commenced on removing several layers of roofing felt, not a nice job but someone has to do it as the saying goes! trees and other plants had taken root in between the layers which did not help matters.

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Many of you who visit Birkhill regularly will have noticed, over the years, the deterioration of the North British Coach body  especially the cladding and its roof protection. Well after discussing with the societies ‘powers at be’ the Birkhill Group have decided to take on the replacement of the cladding and roofing felt. The work is going to take many weeks and is certainly weather dependant, but hopefully the work will help save this 6 wheeled 3rd class historical coach body from further wear and tear and who knows what we will find and be able to do!

It is the intent to document the work on the web site as a mini project in pictures with brief updates within the regular posts.