Thursday 28 February 2013

A Thursday Special - Pulling All the Stops Out!

The Master Plan  for the day was to try and excavate the next strip of Platform 2 - about 50 M in length. In order to achieve this, well over 150 tonnes of  clay from the west embankment had to be removed and transported to the Childswickham end of car park.

Well the day did not start very well with the JCB getting 2 punctures in a row before it arrived and unable to start work until 11am. Nevertheless that seemed to spur the team on to try and meet the days target.






Jo reverses down the slope in the car park



We had two dumpers in action shuttling backwards and forwards to the car park. Jo Roesen in one and Peter Hickox in the other. Its a fair old hike down to the far end of the car park, but both the lads did there best to get there and back safely but as quickly as possible!

Because of the Steepness of the slope in the car park and the loose nature of the material it is necessary for the 4WD Dumper to reverse down the slope and our little Thwaite dumper to reverse in both directions. This inevitably adds to the time to make a trip.
Peter being Loaded at arms length by Steve in the JCB
 After a short lunch work pressed on throughout the afternoon and bit by bit progress was made northward.











Sheer dogged determination kept Steve and Jo going until 1800 hrs when bad light stopped play!

Peter mounts a single handed assault on "A









Peter had his own targets to meet in the afternoon. He and Jo decided that Platform 2A need some more top soil behind it. Peter duly rerouted some dumper loads of good top soil behind the rear slabs.


After some back breaking grafting the whole length of  2A has sufficient topsoil to profiled into the embankment on another day. Brilliant!

The last Load!







I have to say the combination of Jo, Peter and Steve's determination turn the day around. Here are a couple of late shots - note the times!
Steve heads for home.....





And to finish off one of Jo's Videos


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

When can we expect the signal box foundation work/piling to start?

richard said...

Interesting to see in the video the foundation of, I presume, the original passenger foot over bridge. Are you leaving them there or grubbing them out?
You set a cracking pace in 2012 ... 2013 looks like its surpassing it already

Bill said...

Re SB piling now after planning approval.


Re footbridge foundation - we will grub it out.