Plaque marks place in history for 1880s listed footbridge at Wokingham Station

[whole diary]

[stuving]

Does Wokingham have a dual sewerage system (foul and storm)?

Thames Water do have big surface water sewers, mainly for the roads, and one runs close to the car park. Where that leads I don't know - there is another one that does the obvious, and runs down the main road, but this one goes cross-country and actually runs right under those cabins.

So that end of the new road, and the car park (before and after up-storeying), drain into that 975 mm SW sewer. There are no houses along Station Approach (aka Link Road), so it has no foul sewer along it - the station has its own drain going the other way, to Station Road.

The terminology is a bit confusing - are there really some places with surface water sewers separate from road drainage? And practice varies a lot too.  Whether a surface water sewer discharges to a watercourse (the Emm Brook would be the nearest here) or into a foul sewer is another question altogether.

[ellendune]

The terminology is a bit confusing - are there really some places with surface water sewers separate from road drainage? And practice varies a lot too.  Whether a surface water sewer discharges to a watercourse (the Emm Brook would be the nearest here) or into a foul sewer is another question altogether.

Some definitions

A sewer intended to transport both foul sewage and surface water is a combined sewer. 
A sewer intended to transport only foul sewage is a foul sewer
A sewer intended to transport only surface water is a surface water sewer
A pipe transporting only surface water from roads is technical a highway drain and is not a sewer at all. 

I could go on, as I could write a whole book on it - well I have written a whole chapter of a book on it. 

[eightonedee]

The confusion goes further. Over the decades the responsibility for sewers has changed hands. One upon a time it was the old borough, rural and urban districts. After the 1974 local government reorganisation it passed to the new second tier authorities before being transferred to the new privatised water and sewer companies under the Water Industry Act 1991.

The old local authorities had varying standards of record keeping and supervision of drainage works. An extreme example was when much of Caversham passed from Henley Rural District Council to the County Borough of Reading in the 1920s there were almost no records kept to pass over, so even in the 1980s Reading Borough Council did not know where many of Caversham's sewers ran. Prior to 1974 the highways and sewerage authority were often the same, so the distinction between surface water sewers and highway drains seems to have not been something that many councils saw as important.

In the vicinity of railways there are also drains constructed as accommodation works when the railways were built too. Who know what has been connected into them since the nineteenth century.

The categories set out by Ellendune is I think clear. The problem is finding out what the sewers actually do if they are old, rather than modern sewers laid out under agreements with the sewer undertakers.

[MVR S&T]

Perhaps this subject and the new siding could be merged, called interesting things at Wokingham. yes drains and sidings, with the re instatement of existing mechanical signalling from the levers in the signal box IS good to learn about, if that is what is afoot?

[stuving]

Perhaps this subject and the new siding could be merged, called interesting things at Wokingham. yes drains and sidings, with the re instatement of existing mechanical signalling from the levers in the signal box IS good to learn about, if that is what is afoot?

I can't see why - it's not as if either board is particularly full of threads. However, it does look a bit odd that they are not on the same board. I guess that just happens if boards are labelled for services, and two run through Wokingham station.

Incidentally, the crew support module has disappeared, as have all the crews. Presumably it was for the scaffolders and wrappers. The next step is I think to wait for listed building consent - all that's been done so far is a little light dismantling, perhaps to facilitate scaffolding and wrapping.

[stuving]

...
Incidentally, the crew support module has disappeared, as have all the crews. Presumably it was for the scaffolders and wrappers. The next step is I think to wait for listed building consent - all that's been done so far is a little light dismantling, perhaps to facilitate scaffolding and wrapping.

Following the revised planning application (no. 203386), and that burst of on-site activity, we expected a decision after the end of the consultation on 4th February. It came the next day, but that urgency was not matched by the work: nothing for four weeks. Then the grit-blasters (Tighe) arrived, for four days of blasting, then today it was on to painting.

The blasters turned up with loads of mysterious machinery, heaps of grit, and their own generator, plus a Very Big Hose. The wrapping (plus all the extraction and containment kit) did appear to keep the paint dust inside the wrappings, but not the noise they were making. I can't believe it's a remotely pleasant way to spend your day. There was more stuff in their work site, on the nearer car park, and an employee welfare van. So, not using the plumbed-in shed in the other car park? No, because my guess about its purpose was wrong. I've now been able to get to its front door, and seen the SWR^» (South Western Railway - about) sign saying it provides extra staff accommodation to conform with Covid-19 rules.

[stuving]

The footbridge was allowed out of housetent arrest last weekend. I'm not sure why some bits had not been given the full blasting and coating treatment - most likely the scaffolding and wrapping got in the way. There wasn't a full possession today, so maybe it will be done next time there is one - nothing much was done this week, anyway. So I still have to watch the time when I zoom out for my daily walk; I keep getting caught by the barriers.

The final colour is to be Maunsell Green, though I'm not sure that was ever used for structures or buildings. So is that what's already been applied to most of it? I'd been expecting a protective coating and then a final finish coat done heritage-fashion. But maybe not.

But the good news is that there does seem to be a lot of metal left.

[stuving]

At long last the footbridge reopened yesterday - no ceremony, and we'll have to wait and see if the council's heritage officer has any quibbles. It's been closed since 3/12/20, which is more than 24 weeks. I don't think that actual work on the bridge can have occupied more than eight weeks. There's been a lot of waiting - for planning decisions, for wood, for other bits and pieces, and mainly for scheduling the several contractors' teams to turn up.

The old bridge has been fully coated in this famous Maunsell green, but the new bits have come in approved colours for NR^» (Network Rail - home page) footbridges. So the tread edges are white, with yellow at the top and bottom of a flight; the handrails are yellow, and already seem to have bits missing (but may have been fitted like that), and those big fixing bolts are au naturel. There were arguments about what they were going to do to fix the masonry, but seem to have ended up doing very little.

In the first picture you can see how the one of the three supporting rails curves out of the platform face towards the track. This was far from evident before the painting. According to the original drawings, those three "verticals" are bolted to a big slab (of concrete, I guess) just below track level.