Wednesday 20th November 2013 and "Steaming to Broadway" Starts a New Chapter!!!!!

Make a note of the date - the day the construction of Broadway Station  Signal Box started, and the day that the Broadway Area Group's dream of steam returning to Broadway started to come true! It was a cold wet day but  it could not dull the warm feeling we all had as the pile driver started to thump the piles into the ground for the foundations. I certainly walked around with a grin on my face.. J&S Piling have been contracted to construct the signal box base upon which the signal box will be built. There are 15 piles, each six metres in depth. Jo has taken a video which can be seen on YouTube at this address:-
http://youtu.be/rzeRwx75rkU

The target was to complete the piling on the first day. It took all day to get the job done, and required the last two to be completed by headlights! The  foundation work is expected to be completed within 7  days or so . You can see minute by minute progress on the camera shots on the blog and of course I will keep you up to date with blog posts.






You can imagine that the 18 volunteers on site were happy to keep plugging away today, despite the wet and cold weather in the morning. The most common feature of the day was a rain drop on everyone's nose - at least I'm assuming it was rain. Activities for the day included:-

Brian at work ...

Brian from the  line side clearance gang came along and did a masterful job on removing three rogue Ash trees that had self seeded in the eastern embankment. There is a great opportunity for a bonfire on Saturday!

And just in case John, Steve and Gord
 make sure it lands in the right place!

In spite of the weather  some bricklaying was completed on Platform 2B and the new shelter came in to its own. Roger and Tony kept the corbelling going on the southern end, whilst Bob White sets up the end of 2B - yes the end of 2B











As you can see the sun did shine upon the righteous in the afternoon and there were some good photo opportunities, courtesy of Jo.

Work continued on putting  a porch on Marguerite's Shed - an effort to keep the rain off the "stock" when the shed is open. It is not often we have three "Peters" on one job, but today we did!  As you can imagine our funds will be severely depleted now that  the signal box has been started, so please come along and support our cause by spending time (and money!) on the books and bric a brac.

In other areas, the brick cleaning of the plinth bricks for the signal box continued, and we are rather pleased that we have found the 250 or so required to do the job from our reclaimed stock.

Vic continued his efforts with landscaping the borders on the station driveway and its now looking very cared for. Lastly, and by no means least, Rod continued a one man assault on clearing the gully down in the car park. No fun, even on the best of days.

John discusses details with the Forman from J&S

Returning to the Signal Box for a moment I would like to thank John Crawford for his  meticulous design work on the box, and  deploying his great experience in ensuring the job has been planned out in the finest detail. It will be a Signal Box that we can all be proud of.