Monday 13th January 2014

Seven people at CRC2 today, a day of blue skies all round and when yours truly arrived at the early hour of 08.30 Bob W and John O were already hard at work, with a barrow of mix on site and a couple of dozen blues already laid. Must get out of bed earlier! (or live in Cheltenham, as these two earlybirds)

Bob finishing a row of blues at the 40m mark

We have now passed the 30m mark, completed to corbelling, and today added two rows of blues to the 40 and 50m stretches.

We were honoured by a visit from the Chairman. The waterlogged site is apparent, with scaffolding boards laid down to keep our feet dry. Worn out boots suck up a surprising amount of water!

Just before lunch Bob used up the remaining mortar to back up in reds, and a degree of urgency developed as the skies began to turn black and we knew the rain  was coming.

Bob does his own backing up - our chief backer-up has jetted off to the sun - and in the background the fully completed 30m section is apparent

At the northern end of the site Brian, Vic and your scribe had a PWay trolley out to retrieve a cache of imperial Brindles dumped along the trackbed, we think set aside from the demolition of the original, leaning, platform. This is just what we need for Broadway where we are still short of blues. A CRC, we are laying metrics, and the two are not compatible.

Brian returns with a trolley full of imperial blues, found in the brambles beyond the signal box

So who's going to come and help me stack these then?

All in all, we retrieved about 1000 blue Imperials, which we stacked by the gate on two pallets and in three dumpy bags, ready for collection as a return load with Fairview.

Finally, a shot of the CRC bracket signal, which is the same as the one that might go up at Broadway, if sponsorship can be found. It's not crooked; the camera angle and wide angle distort the post.