Wednesday 15th January 2014 - All Systems Go!

There were 19 Volunteers on site today and, whilst dodging a few showers, everyone was working flat out on a broad cross section of jobs.

  It was time to start the infilling of Platform 2B and Graham Morrison came along with a 360 excavator, and, together with  Jo on a hired dumper, great progress was made.  As  practice now, we put a layer of brick rubble in between a 9" layer of ash/ballast. Here on the right, Jo snaps  a picture of Brian T with rake in hand. If there was a super hero award today, Brian would get it - his efforts at barrowing  bricks and pea gravel, and ballast raking from 9 in the morning till 4 at night were very much appreciated.





On the left Gord is on the roller, helping Brian to level out the ballast laid so far.












  AT the northern end of 2B better access was require behind the wall  in order to allow dumper movement from north to south. In completing this Graham was also able to shore up a couple of minor slips brought about by the recent rain.

Graham managed also to put some clean ballast down near the signal box area which was getting decidedly boggy.




Talking of the Signal Box, Bob and Clive continued with  bricklaying. Good steady progress was made and its a joy to see the SB rising from the slab.










Further to the south Gord (who is never happier than when he's got a theodolite in his hand) and Dave were working out some  ballast levels in relation to the ER Bridge deck. This is required for accurate calculations to be made of loadings on the bridge. John Balderstone, please feel free to give a full  technical explanation! I have the results but won't attempt to interpret them here.






It was also all happening on the Platform 2B wall itself. Three bricklayers (Peter Q, Peter H and Paul - not quite Peter Paul and Mary) were laying the finished sub corbelling level and Roger B was putting  the first course of corbelling on, in the relative luxury of the shelter! It's coming along nicely.







Up on the embankment, Brian M was continuing to cut back the trees  and, with Dave B's help got a pretty fair bonfire going. See photo 3 above. After lunch Peter Q and  and Peter T went on a mission to measure up the ballast boards require to refurbish the 2 bridges in our territory.

They will have seen from their vantage point that Rod and Terry were continuing the slog of clearing the car park ditch. I am sure I will get a report from them shortly. I am only able to work until 1300 hrs on Wednesdays, and therefore missed their weary return!

Rod's Report:-

Terry and I had a good day, we didn't quite finish as hoped, we encountered a lot more brambles and self seeded trees to be cleared.

A lot of sawing and lopping rather than the speedier Sthil, however, there is now only about ten yards to go, so one more session should

see it done. I think then it might be an idea to work our way back and do a bit more shovelling to get the gradient right along the length.

We also managed to get a fire going and disposed of most of the rubbish. 

Quite a few walkers through and some good comments about what we've done, so good PR as well, the trick will be to keep on top of it.

See you next week, cheers

Rod 

Chris  and David Helm, together with Mike Speake were on brick cleaning duty - the atmosphere on site would not be the same without the chink-chink of hammer on chisel.

Thanks to everyone who helped today -  great progress was made and I trust everyone went home tired but content with a job well done.