The second day back filling at CRC2A. Again breezy but generally sunny weather. Angry skies over the distant hills, but the rain never got to us, and we managed to work almost continuously, except when there was a train movement. We managed to time these pretty much to coincide with tea breaks, so no harm done.

The crew eagerly await the next delivery of spoil.

The purpose of the day was to add a second layer of spoil, and add a second layer of pea gravel on top of the first. This involves partitioning off a section of the infill with scaffolding boards, which are removed once both spoil and pea gravel are in. In this way any water trapped behind the wall can drain down and out through periodic cross drains in the blockwork.

Filling a dumper with pea gravel

Today was a running day, so we had visits from Dinmore Manor and a class 20. Here you can see the class 20 making an appearance behind the signal box. An ugly locomotive, but an interesting diesel noise, with plenty of whistling from the turbo - I think.

Pouring pea gravel with buckets

As the little 1T dumpers don't have a swivelling bucket, the pea gravel had to be loaded into its trench by hand using buckets. We started at the Hunting Butts end, and slowly worked our way north, so that the journey got shorter and shorter. Today we had two experienced dumper drivers, and delivery was a lot faster, going like clockwork, with very little waiting time. Unfortunately we were well down on volunteers, with only six (10 yesterday) at best. In the latter half of the day all the shovelling fell upon John and Brian, which was a lot to ask of the same people all day long. At the end of the day they were exhausted - just look at the uninterupted stretch behind the dumper still to be infilled. So here is a plea to GWSR volunteers - please come and help Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Help share the load, even if only for half a day, you can sit in front of the cabin, drink tea and watch trains in between shifts.

The class 20 trundles by.      I'm 60...?

It seems the class 20 is younger than all of us, as we are all well over 60.

A dumper loaded with spoil sets off for CRC2A

At the end of the day, we had infilled 85m of the 100m behind the platform. This is less than yesterday, firstly because the drain and pea gravel were already built into the first layer, whereas we had to do both pea gravel and spoil today, and secondly because there were fewer people to share the load at the distribution end. Tomorrow we will therefore first finish off the second layer (the last 15m) and then roll it, before commencing the third layer. This will then be all spoil only, no more pea gravel being required.

Finally a picture of Dinmore Manor coming into Cheltenham Race Course station. Two loaded dumpers are waiting for the run round to complete, before setting off again down platform two.

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday then - do see if you can come and help.