Appointment of Bill Britton as Head of Department

I am pleased to report that the GWSR Board has approved the appointment of Bill Britton as Head of Department in charge of the rebuilding of Broadway Station. Bill has headed the team rebuilding the platforms and with work in progress on the signal box and due to start next year on the station buildings, he has agreed to also take on the responsibility for the planning application and construction management for the required car park and access road upgrade.


Congratulations to Bill and we ask everyone to support him in his widened role of looking after all aspects of the rebuilding of Broadway Station. His blog site is widely read and has been an excellent record of progress.


Alan Bielby

Completion of Broadway Bridge Restoration and Road Reopened

I am pleased to report that the road under the GWR railway bridge at Broadway was reopened this morning after 3 months of closure for bridge restoration. The reopening is two days ahead of programme and this is all the more impressive because removal of the rusted steelwork revealed additional steel replacement work that had to be included in the work. Congratulations go to Messrs Laws for the timely completion of a complicated package of work and to John Balderstone for working hard to ensure the high level of input from the GWR to enable this to happen. We must also thank the residents of Broadway for their patience while the road was closed.


Some additional drainage work remains on the adjacent embankments and once this is completed work will start on the Childswickham bridge. This will commence in about two weeks time.


Alan Bielby

GWSR PLC Financial Position at the half year, 31 July 2014

Dear All,

I was pleased to be able to report to the Board on Friday 29th August that the operations of the railway in the 6 months to 31 July 2014 have been very good financially, both in terms of operating profit and cash flow.

The good cash results were despite having to absorb the cost of a number of unbudgeted items which included remedial work on the slips at Dixton Cutting and Defford Straight and the purchase of a second Ford Transit.

In addition, I am pleased to advise you that cash inflow into the Bridges to Broadway share issue has been good although we are not quite there yet - with two months of the offer to go if you have been holding off buying shares now's the time!

 

I think everybody is well aware of the excellent work being done by George Law and Co. on the bridges supervised by John Balderstone, and the fantastic progress being made at Broadway by Bill Britton's team.

Looking ahead to next year, 2015 will be a very important year for us in our drive to reach Broadway in both civil engineering and tracking laying northwards from Laverton and continued development of the station site.

Accordingly, with the Board's approval, I have asked all heads of department to look carefully at all second half expenditure to ensure our cash resources by the year end are as large as possible in order to be able to fully support next year's investment in our railway.

These are good times on our railway!

 

If anybody has any questions for me please email finance.director@gwsr.com

 

Best wishes,

 

Chris Bristow

 

Father Brown

They were filming yesterday evening at Winchcombe, and Mark Williams (Father Brown) said he had seen the episode they filmed with us a couple of months ago and thinks we will be very impressed by the coverage of the railway. Apparently they used a drone overhead. Don't know when it will be shown though - they are filming 15 episodes and expect to finish filming late October.
(Incidentally I am told that the tunnel is featured briefly in the Dr Who trailer currently on television)
Colin Fewell

Feedback

Thought everyone would like to see the following. We get a few of these and it is nice to get praise and not brickbats.
Colin Fewell

Name: Andrea Thomas

We spent the day travelling on the GWR on Sunday 17th August and had the most wonderful day. Your volunteers are so friendly and helpful and nothing was too much trouble for them. Please pass on thanks from my family for making our time with you truly memorable!

Plc Board Awayday meeting

The Board of the Plc met on Saturday last for their annual Awayday. We had a full day's meeting from 9.30am until 5.00pm with hardly time to draw breath.

There were a large number of important issues discussed, but the one uppermost in most minds at the moment will be the progress we are making in getting to Broadway.

As a start, it was unanimously agreed that Lee Allibone who was elected a director at the last A.G.M should be appointed as Engineering Director, which gives specific responsibilities for Permanent Way and S&T.

Further to that it was proposed, and agreed by Lee that he would accept overall responsibility for co-ordinating the delivery of the extension of our railway from Laverton to Broadway. To start with, he was tasked with preparing an inital list of requirements for extending the track from the current railhead at Laverton to  Little Buckland.

As was explained to us all, building the extension has to be progressed in a logical way:

1 We have to fence and secure our boundaries. This will come at significant cost, and estimates are being prepared.

2. Clearance of the trackbed has to be undertaken. To achieve that we have to arrange for ecological surveys to be undertaken, to ensure that we comply with all legal obligations regarding the management of wildlife

3. Drainage clearance and improvement works have then to be completed.

4. The trackbed then needs to be graded, levelled and bottom ballasted so that a secure base is prepared

5. After all that, track laying can begin.

The intention is that the extension will be constructed in stages, as funds and manpower allow. We have access to sufficient necessary sleepers, but have to purchase rail.

Funding will of course be crucial to our success, and plans are being developed to try and ensure that adequate funding will be available within the timescale that we all want.

To bring all volunteers fully up to date, it is intended that a volunteers meeting will be held; probably on Saturday 1st November (subject to booking arrangements). At that meeting, the Board will explain what is proposed, and all being well we shall also have a presentation upon what is intended at Broadway Station. Full details of the proposed meeting will be published shortly.

I hope that this gives you a sufficient flavour of all the work that is currently on-going. Coupled with all the work now being undertaken on the bridges, we are getting closer to realising the dream of completing the extension to Broadway within a realistic timescale.

Richard Johnson LLB
Company Secretary

Questionnaires on the train

You will know we give everyone a questionnaire on the train. Interesting ones yesterday! Against the question "What did you like most about your trip?" the comment was - sitting next to my uncle. Against "What did you like least?" was - sitting opposite my nan. Against "what could we do better" was - have more sexy staff. And a Japanese couple wrote that they expected the trains to run much faster!
Colin Fewell