Our regular Wednesday blog, and the last by your interim correspondent - BAG chairman Bill will be back on Saturday, and then the tea breaks will be slightly shorter !

First of all, that curious C130 J Hercules flew over again, this time it was 'Gotcha' and here is proof! Wasn't quite as low as the last time, which is why I got a few seconds warning. It's quite thrilling really in the valley, with all this low flying military aircraft. Sometimes we get a Chinook over our house at minimum height, quite exciting to hear the 'whoop-whoop' except that last time it was 02.15 at night, and just as we were dozing off again, it came back the other way at 02.20....

Back to the station... we had a good strong gang today and excellent weather. There was plenty of gardening, brick cleaning, and clearance of the embankment. When I arrived at 08.45, a gang was just finishing the removal of the last two bags of plinth headers, leaving just the two crates of crates to be removed from 2c's path.

'Banksy' Gordon with the spray can marking the posts for 2c.

This now clear stretch enabled Gordon to set out the extension for platform 2c, so we are ready to dig.

At the other end of the site Malcolm Walker and John Simms were meeting to discuss the next way forward on the box. We are building it, but one day S&T will take it over, so an increasing collaboration here is clearly essential. Good to see you, Malcolm!

Later in the morning Richard from Fairview came to give us 2 hours of his time. This enabled a team led by Roger to lay a further 8 slabs on 1c.

You can see the gang cleaning the slab here, just before it is placed on the platform extension. Cleaning of the Avonmouth bricks continues in the background.

The correct placing of the many slabs on the curving platform is a skilled job, and just as it goes down you can see Roger with the white hard hat behind giving final instructions for the exact position. Although we are measuring the position carefully each time, there is nothing like a good eye to see if things are going in the right direction.

While we were waiting for Richard, Dave, Tony, Terry and Peter dug a narrow trench behind the wall to add some extra pea gravel to aid the rear drainage. This was shoveled out of a dumpy bag delivered last Saturday.

Down by the entrance gate, Dave was setting out a new fence across the bottom of the strip of our land that runs parallel to the drive, which we cleared and drained recently. This now looks a lot neater.

Thanks to the sunny weather once again, we had a steady stream of visitors. Brian did a number of personal guided tours for donations - is this a new source of income we have found? - and Julie reports a good turnover in the shop today as well.

Finally, another piece of history that might interest our viewers:

Here is a cutting from a 1959 photograph of the station. Notice the 'BROADWAY' sign on the left? It is a rather curious additional station name board, that seems to have figured only on our line. It is white on an olive green enamel background. I know this, because I have found the original at the home of a collector! Here it is:

A piece of Broadway history preserved !