It's hot ! And dusty !
7 volunteers baked in the sun today, whipped by winds carrying clouds of white dust brought in by the racecourse lorries with spoil.

You can barely see the signal box

The guys making up the mortar - John O and Derek - were really suffering by the box, as a 20T lorry trundled by every 5 minutes, enveloped in a huge cloud of fine dust. Having a rest outside the cabin was no respite, nor was an escape to platform 1, which offered shade but no relief from the dreaded white cloud. Arghhhh!

A lot of brown required today

In between the lorries, John and Derek made endless barrowloads of brown mortar. We were one 'blue' bricklayer down, but rich in 'red' brick layers, hence the need for extra brown mortar. Luckily the distance to push the barrow has now nearly halved, so we get there without having to take a rest half way.

The unsung hero.

Our feature picture today is of Tony, relentlessly backing up. The brickies doing blues get all the attention with their fine brickwork out front and in the eye of the public, but in fact there are twice as many reds to be laid as the blues, so hats off to the backers up. Today they were John S, Tony and Pete from B&S. Your 15 minutes of fame, lads. Well done!

Coming to the end of the 90m section.

Another milestone was reached today with the completion of the 90m section, which we can see here being leveled off by Tony with a final layer of mortar, nice and smooth. Bob did the last row of corbelling at the front, and then turned his efforts to two rows of blues on the current last section to 100m.

Bob finishes off the 90m corbelling, while John S backs up the 100m section in reds.

John O can be seen shuttling backwards and forwards with shovels of mortar to keep the hungry brick layers supplied, while Keith and yours truly did the logistics for the brick supply, by moving them around the site, cleaning them (Keith) and stacking them ready for use. Of course the piles can't stay out front like this, as trains will be running past here the very next day, so they have to get used up.

Withe 'release' of the 90m section, yours truly and Keith sprang into action with the 'pea gravel express' and filled in the drain pipe up to where the brick layers were still working. Only 10m more to go. It's quite a battlefield that gets left behind, all broken bricks, bits of the old platform that somehow got left over, and surplus stacks of bricks that have to be moved, yet again. Haven't I seen this brick before?

Pete took 5 to do a little walk along the top of the cutting, and reported an adder having a little sun bath. We won't be having a picnic up there then !

Just the 100m section left to finish off then.

At the end of the day we left the site with just one row of plain blues to go on the 100m section, and the three rows of corbelling. That can be done in two sessions. Finish off with the drain and the last 10m of pea gravel, and we are ready to start back filling.

So where d'ya want it, guv?

A sample lorry load of crushed concrete has also arrived. If this is acceptable, we can fix a day when a digger and mini dumper can be hired to add the first layer of back fill. This needs to be rolled, then a new trough of pea gravel added, and rolled again. Not simple !