Category: Station News

It was a lovely day, but a tad windy for the task we had set ourselves for the day, but we managed to fix down the second layer of membrane to the grounded North British coach. We just need to finish off the framing to were the membrane finishes and a little more painting and that will be job done for the cosmetic tidy up of the exterior and hopefully the frame of the carriage protected for a few years to come until it can be restored.

We also found some time to start removing the tired summer bedding in the barrel containers and hanging baskets, we are replacing with winter flowering Pansy’s & Viola’s fingers crossed that they bloom like last years!

Well that was a quick summer!  thankfully the platform embankment walled garden has still got plenty of colour left in it, but is starting to look tired and it will soon be time for the big clean up. This weekend was Thomas the Tank Engine – DOWT prep. – bunting, signs, banners & power cable laying, took a little longer than usual this time around due to the heavy down pours but we got there, however we ran out of time to do more work on the grounded carriage.  We are hopefully this will be complete before the end of September.

Sunday got up early again to capture a shot of peppercorn A1 Class 60163 Tornado on its way down to Bo’ness for the week having ran the Aberdonian rail-tour on 31st August. Birkhill has seen some great engines this year, hopefully we will have the same opportunities in 2020!

There is a video in the Gallery 2019 station visitors page of Tornado with the empty coach stock and supporting West Coast Railway’s Class 37.

Work focused on straightening out the existing roof membrane which since fitting almost a year ago has kept the interior of the coach very dry. It has now been turned, tacked and cut to final length, it took a while but we managed to get there in one shift. The intent is to fit a second membrane layer before finishing off the turned trim with timber to complete exercise.

As mentioned on many occasion volunteering does have its perks so to speak, while busily priming and first coat glossing the embankment side of the North British coach we had some great opportunities to see close up the visiting Black 5 44871 which was providing the horse power for the Saturday timetable. The Black 5 is being stabled at Bo’ness whilst it supports the SRPS Railtour August Sunday runs around Fife & Tweedbank. To finish the day off 419 and the Caley coaches made a trip up the hill to Birkhill too!!

 

For more pictures please go to the Gallery page.

Anyway less of the trainspotting and back to the work at hand. Corner edging has now been fitted to both ends of the coach which brings to a close the cladding, the embankment side of the coach has been primed and work has started on the main gloss work.  It is hoped weather permitting to complete the work next weekend.

 

Finally found time to provide an update post for what has been happening at Birkhill during the last few weeks.  Well not a great deal other than summer holidays, Days out with Thomas the odd Tornado passing through the station and a couple of trips up to Manuel, but  we have made some significant progress on the North British coach cladding project, which we are glad to report we are almost finished!

The platform side of the coach has been primed and two coats of gloss (the same used on the Station building). Hopefully the look is acceptable by all.  Once the vents have been boxed in we intend to complete the roof covering before we move to the embankment side to paint and finish the job off

 

Whilst the Birkhill Group commenced the painting of the North British grounded coach in the colours of the Station, the Monday Squad have been busy erecting the upstand columns for the new footbridge, this a major step forward for the station and once complete will provide a great new feature for Birkhill!

Work continued on planting up the boarders, baskets and containers with bedding plants, this year we are to try hanging baskets to see how they will cope watering wise with only getting to visit the station twice a week keeping hanging baskets watered is a concern. Work also commenced on thinning out areas of the platform embankment and attempting to identify the plants we have. Where possible the intent is to create additional plants from the thinning out exercise for planting on elsewhere in the station grounds. There are several different varieties of geraniums along the embankment and its hoped we can create areas that will show them off better in years to come.

Stalwart diesel 27001 returning from Manuel with the empty SRPS coach stock used on

Not only have we had some fine weather to get the group back into the gardening spirit after the DOWT weekend, we also had the famous Scot visiting too!!.  For the last couple of weeks we have had 60103 the Flying Scotsman stabled down at Bo’ness and so for the 2nd time in the month we managed to capture the Scotsman passing through Birkhill adding to our 2019 visitors gallery.

Anyway less of the train spotting and back to the business of maintaining the station. Summer planting has been the order of the day for the last couple of weekends planting up containers and weeding out the embankment. We are going to start to thin out some of the planted areas to create some form of structure to the planting which, over time will improve the appearance.

The Monday squad has also been back in action, back filling behind the 2nd platform wall in preparation for the landing of the new footbridge in a couple of weeks weather permitting.

This weekend the vast majority of the time was preparing (bunting hanging & grass cutting was done ) for the 1st of this years ‘Days out with Thomas’ weekends (11 & 12th May), so very little work took place on the North British Coach recladding project other than thinking of the next steps over a cup of coffee.

We also got our first 2019 visitor at the station – A4 No. 60009 Union of South Africa which was stabling at Bo’ness in between Rail tour excursions. 60009 along with CR No. 419 worked together on today’s bank holiday services as can be seen in the pictures below and also on the Gallery page – Station Visitors 2019

Now that the platform side of the grounded North British Coach has been fully cladded & painted with primer, work commenced on the embankment side of the coach. As found already many of the door hinges are no longer in situ, however the timbers on this side do appear to have been protected better and are in many places remarkably still solid as we stripped off the old cladding.  Its recent history of being a medical facility is also visible which is nice to see!  Usual process followed, remove cladding, old nails, clean off as much of the prime as possible, and apply wood preservative, and new weatherboard timbers secured to standoff timbers.

Work on the coach will slow down over the next couple of weeks with the build up to the first ‘Days out with Thomas’ but we hope to complete the cladding replacement work before the end of May.