The Thursday Gang Roll Out The Black Carpet

The Thursday Gang were out in force with over 15 people on site.  There were multiple jobs going on and Andy had fun keeping up with everything that was happening. Here are the photos he took during the day.

First up Dave, Harvey and Glynn discuss the recently arrived concrete sleepers.  From the piles there were sleepers that moved to strategic points along the line.

Glynn and Harvey were out surveying and marking up the levels, here you can see back towards the bridge with the poles in position to assist in surveying.  It looks like the gradient under the bridge will be around 1 in 80 though the final figure will be confirmed once the track has been laid.

The scrap skip made a return and was filled with around 350 broken and scrap chairs and the corroded beams from the cattle creep.  That will generate more funds for the Weston extension.

After watching the bridge works for so long it was time to start moving things under the bridge.  The first roll of the membrane was brought up through the bridge.  This membrane allows the water to drain through but stops the earth and sub base from rising up and mixing with the ballast.  Here Steve, Andy, Dave and photographer Andy manhandle the roll through the bridge.

And so it came to rolling out the 'carpet', in our case it is black.  Here we are starting from the current railhead and  going south.

Andy and Phil roll out the membrane with Steve and Glynn supervising.  Dave keeps checking the alignment to make sure it is in the centre of the future running line.  The black carpet will be covered up by the tonnes of fresh ballast that will arrive shortly.

Eight concrete sleepers were taken down the line and these will be used to make up the full-length track panel to the north of the cattle creep.  

The sleepers are on the left of this view of the cattle creep

Many thanks to Andy for the report and pictures and Glynn for the extra information.

Elsewhere work continued with coach restoration and parts are being refitted where possible

A big thank you to all who turned up.

Until next time.