Thursday 3 April 2014

Wednesday 2nd April 2014

April already - where did that month go!

There was great progress on several fronts today - 14 volunteers were at Broadway, and 7 at Wishaw, working on the Broadway Footbridge. More of that on a separate post.

Pointing in unison...
Signal Box wise, things really moved along today. A team of 4 (John,  Bob W, Tony and Paul) managed to get another 2 courses across the front face of the box. There are 2 more courses to go before the plinth and damp course, and then the red brickwork starts! This is a real milestone, together with the  building of the pillars for the  steel beams which will carry the lever frame.



At the end of the day....














Further to the south, at the end of 1A, Clive with some help from Bob J was putting the final corbelling courses on the barrow crossing extension.











We had the services of a 3t excavator today, with Steve Warren onboard.  He was able to make some adjustments to the height of the ballast behind  2B so that the rear slabbing could continue. Here Gordon, Terry (fresh back from his antipodean holiday) and Steve B working on the slabs. I'm not sure how many were laid by the end of day - I'm sure one of the gang will let me know - its such hard work!


Rod, Dave and Steve discuss tactics



One of our many important peripheral projects at Broadway is to look after the general landscaping, maintain our boundary fencing and perhaps most importantly of all, to keep drains and ditches flowing. To that end we are concentrating on the eastern boundary(beyond the driveway) and have started work to sort out the ditch (which has a natural water course running down it) and the fencing.



Here Rod admires the mornings handy-work. A drain pipe was installed in the afternoon, and Steve will be back on Thursday, to tidy the job up.









Good work continued elsewhere on site, just my poor photo opportunity instinct missed the action. (Jo was at Wishaw).
Peter H was busy starting the refurbishment of a new office cabin that we have purchased as a project office. You will see more of this as work progresses. Vic continued his work on the Driveway boarders - the Cotswold stone wall looks as though its always been there.

Mike T gives advice on the finer points of brick laying.......
We had many visitors today.

 One was BAG Volunteer Mike Trowman who had brought along some Railwayana treasure donated by a colleague, Ray. This includes the firebox number off a pannier tank. I'm sure Jo will gather these things together and comment on them when he returns! Thank you very much for the donation.







Finally the local constabulary paid one of their regular friendly visits, to see how we're getting on.


 A bit of a rushed blog - today - but often no worse for that!

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