Vale of Rheidol Volunteers By Clive Higgs & Jenny Edwards, Railway Volunteers
Preparations for 2023’s volunteering work started with a surprise in November last year. One day the volunteers had dug out 25 red boxes of geraniums from the troughs at Nantyronen Halt and put them into the waiting room there, to wait over the winter. 25 red boxes containing tulip and daffodil bulbs were carried from summer storage up to the platform, put into the troughs and dug neatly in. The boxes held wet soil and we had a long day. At last we sat on a platform bench for lunch, three hours late. Jenny served out cheese rolls and mugs of coffee just as the Permanent Way Gang arrived in their Permaquip. It was an ambush. Batty jumped out, shouting ‘Stop! Stop! You can’t sit there!’. We thought he was joking but no, the gang were collecting all the benches to put inside a carriage shed to dry out. We were left standing, holding roll and mug, grumbling that not even Jesse James’ gangs had taken railway benches. There was no space in the waiting room for sitting. In January we started work on painting the 19 benches piled high in the corridor of the shed. There were: •Eight 6-foot benches with 2 solid GWR castiron bases and 4 planks. Quite heavy; •Four 8-foot Cambrian Railway benches, each with 4 cast-iron legs looking like sticks and 2 planks. Quite light; •Six 10-foot benches, each with six I-section cast iron legs and 3 planks. These were heavy and unwieldy; •A single wooden 7-foot bench with 4 legs and 4 planks. This belonged to the (railway’s) ‘precambrian era’! It is in excellent condition having spent its time sheltered in the platform porch by Devil’s Bridge’s shop door. We were keen to get going and carried benches along the corridor to the small working area to Page 24
fettle, sand and paint them in the appropriate colours. (We painted the same colours except for the two ‘stick-leg’ benches at Aberffrwd, painted to match the Cambrian Railway greens of the station and water tanks.) We had to wait until the weather warmed to at least 5oC for the painting and use floodlights when it was too wet or windy to have the doors open. Then we had to wait until the paint had dried and hardened before moving the benches away and re-stacking them. After all the benches were painted the P-way gang put them back onto the platforms in time for the first passenger train on March 25th. John returned to repairing the wooden sack barrow at Aberffrwd Station. The other volunteers tidied and weeded the existing station gardens, troughs and half barrels. When the display of daffodil and tulip flowers ended in May, we dug up their bulbs at Capel Bangor and wrapped these in wire mesh and hung that from the ceiling of the platelayers’ hut near Nantyronen. We hope that rats will not eat them! Last year’s red geraniums in the Capel Bangor troughs had died over the winter so they were replaced by new pink and red ones. In the Nantyronen troughs the ‘spring’ red boxes holding the bulbs were replaced by the ’summer’ red boxes in the waiting room. But the winter had been so cold geraniums had died there as well. So new geraniums were bought or gratefully received from Jenny and planted instead. Maureen looked after Aberffrwd gardens alone, planting antirrhinums, lobelias, cosmos, hydrangeas and some marigolds that were attacked by slugs. At Devil’s Bridge Station, geraniums and
