16th April 2014 - Broadway Footbridge - A Report from Wishaw

Jim Hitchen sent me a report on the Broadway Footbridge reclamation work, currently being a carried out at Wishaw:-

Bill

 A glorious sunny day in Wishaw on what turned out to be a somewhat frustrating day as far as progress was concerned.  In view of the heavy committment earlier this week at both Cheltenham and Avonmouth, it was hardly surprising that we could only put out a small but very select team of four volunteers, Roger J, Peter Q, Ian H, and myself.  This was further reduced at lunchtime when yours truly returned to Broadway to attend a meeting..

Ian wrestling with some guttering

The main success of the day was a meeting with a local shot blasting company to discuss the way forward with the various footbridge components.  Unfortunately the main span and the two staircase sections are too big for this firm's workshop and as they don't shot blast on site, we will have to look into other similar companies. Subject to an acceptable quotation the two tower sections and the two staircase mid platform supports will be treated as one job and we are hoping to have these prepared for treating by the end of this month.  However we hadn't realised that all the loose rust has to be chipped off by hand before shot blasting, so we will have our work cut out to achieve this.

Peter  doing the same on the other tower

On our previous visit we had been pleasantly surprised by how easily most of the low level bolts were coming off.  Well today was different.  It took all four of us about an hour to prise off four high level bolts and that was with the aid of a seven foot scaffold pole.

 

Three men undoing one of the high level bolts,
 it actually took four but I just had to stop and get the camera out.

We did manage to complete two quite important tasks.  The most important one being to cover both staircase sections with tarpaulins so as to stop the rainwater collecting on the steps which are now in a horizontal rather than a vertical one. The second was to complete the stripping of the walkway timber from the spare footpath span.  Unfortunately the promised storage container was still not available though we should be able to move all our materials in to it on our next visit.

Finally I now have a firm date to meet with a consultant whom I hope will be able to undertake the design work necessary to produce the design details for the foundations and the modifications necessary so that the footbridge will meet our requirements when it is finally installed at Broadway.

   

Regards

  

Jim H.

Thanks to all who went to Wishaw today. It's  a daunting task in anyone's book, but such a rich  reward to see it all back in place at Broadway.