Oswestry is not the most obvious place you can think of to see Mermaids but the Thursday Gang are full of surprises. The Middleton Road footbridge is due some repairs and the best way to achieve the lift and restoration is with access from the railway. The concentration on clearing the running line to the north of the station allows the contractors equipment to run down to the bridge. The area around where the machines will be working required some more ballast to be dropped so our 'Mermaid' was filled with fresh ballast and a few runs made down to the bridge, where the stone was dropped alongside the track.
Mermaid is the name given to this type of wagon and there are many other types given similar names of nautical creatures, Dolphin, Dogfish, Shark etc. So if anyone thinks there are no Mermaids in Oswestry you can put them right!
First job was to load the fresh ballast. Here is the contractor's tuck loading the Mermaid whilst Andy and Phil look on.
Of course to make the four trips needed an operations team, here are Alan, Tom and Dave acting as the three wise monkeys. It was wise to have sun hats as, like the rest of the country, there are currently days of endless sunshine.
Andy R watches as the Mermaid swims along to the chosen site....
....and then with almost a Siren's wail the contents are deposited where needed.
The ballast was then spread where needed to give support to the crane outriggers
Another Thursday Gang adventure completed it was back to base to swap fishy stories and replace fluids lost during the day.
Until next time.
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