Troughs and Stakes

Tuesday 13th Oct

Seven of us at Broadway today split into two groups - one on signal wire stakes and one on cable troughs.

Four of us continued with the laying og the concrete troughs southwards to Childswickham Bridge. The advanced party cleared the brambles, etc from the side of the fence adjacent to the caravan park site.

Then the process of lifting the bases down onto a roughly levelled ballast base. We took turns at this to prevent too much back ache - here are Keith L and Peter W taking a lead:

Luckily the gravel boarding along the bottom of the fence made it relatively easy to maintain the level and alignment.
And an end on view of the alignment up to the end of the fence

This is as far as we go for the time being. This gap between Childswickham Bridge and the fence is where the advanced starter signal is going to be situated, so to leave access for Steve to dig us a hole we will leave the rest of the troughing until the post is in and the position of any pulley blocks is determined:

Here, opposite, lying on the ground, is the post for signal no. 8 (advanced starter). I believe that plans are afoot to "plant" this post at the end of next week.

Meanwhile back towards the station work continues with the siting of the stakes for the signal wires. These are now in as far as the start of wooden fence by the caravan site - they are approx 3ft long so there is plenty of hammering to get them to the required height (bottom roller block mointing  hole 2" above rail height as measured with our trusty plank!)

Finished off with collar of concrete to keep them rigidly fixed. Here Keith L is shovelling the concrete from a barrow . This is being wheeled from the mixer at the end of platform 1 ramp - not very clever. We will have to acquire a P/Way trolley next time as we get further away to make life a bit easier 

And finally, here is a picture of the finished barrow crossing at platform 1 North. Must give the rubber a bit of a scrub next time!

Curly