A fine day's brick laying today, with 7 volunteers, of which 4 brick layers.

We worked on 4 sections - the 60, 70, 80 and 90m sections. In the picture above, you can see John placing the heavy corbelling bricks on the 60m section. Each brick then has a counterweight brick placed on it. This section was then backed up later in the day by Tony, and thanks to them both, we can now say that the 60m section is complete. The following 70m section had the second row of corbelling placed, and it is now one row away from also complete. Pretty satisfying, that.

John S on the easy part of his day, standing up. He is backing up on the 70m section. Shortly he would be laying the row of blocks on the deck behind him....

Yup.... not so comfortable now! John laid a whole 10m section of blocks, by himself. Yours truly's contribution was to slap on the muck. At the end of the afternoon, John had laid 90 blocks on the 80m section. A block weighs 12 Kg, so that's.... one ton !

There came a short interlude when Ron and Pete from B&S arrived to collect some slabs for Toddington. This is to build a path around the back of the platform 2 waiting room. Those slabs looked heavy, so two of us went over to assist. We slid them down the planks, on to the Pway trolley, rolled it up the line and then used a hoist to load them on to the B&S pick up. Those are also heavy, and particularly unnerving is when two people are carrying one, and it suddenly decides to snap in half, leaving you unexpectedly holding half the weight with no support at the other end.

Here you can see John S at the start of his block laying marathon. The whole row had to go on, and there were no GC lads today to help. In the foreground is Bob on his hands and knees, putting a third course of blues on to the 80m section. These ended the day level with the newly laid blocks, which means the start of some serious laying of reds next. Perhaps the GC lads can come next week? This is what they do well.

An overview, near the end of the day. I can now take this picture while having a little rest under the canopy of platform 1 ! On the right is the 90m section, along which we laid out the supplies for the first course. Brian and I , between loads of mortar, also spent the day moving bricks and blocks around. They are never in the right place, or there are too many, or they are damaged and wanted somewhere else.

I noticed this poster on the end of the platform 1 building. I think it's great design, congratulations to whoever put that together. The horse and a GWR engine racing towards the viewer, a great scene. I hear that the race trains are a growing success, which is very heart warming.

Finally, I have been given a 1907 picture of a railmotor at Winchcombe, and have some questions about it. Can readers help? I will post it tomorrow.