A small party turned up at 8.30 this morning, to find two dumpers delivered, but no digger! Also, one of our dumper drivers has yielded to the siren call of the Fairford air show, and no amount of smiles, good humour or mini Swiss rolls can beat that. So we were just 4.

It turned out that the promised larger (3 ton) digger had not been returned by the previous hirer on time, so could not be delivered. We then ordered 'anything you can get us' and a mini digger turned up at 11.20.

What to do in the meantime?

Our neighbours are busy.

Well, we can always stare at the earthworks being graded in the field behind the signal box. Every working day, for several weeks now, two lorries and a huge dumper have been ferrying soil from the race course works, over our L/C and into the field behind the signal box. There must be several 10.000 tons being moved, yet that field swallows it almost without effect. In the picture above you can see a 20T load arriving on the big dumper, and the Caterpillar getting ready to pounce on the load. The puffy clouds in the distance promise no good though.

Brian digging  'an 'ole'

We decided to dig another lamp post hole while we waited. This took quite a long time, as you are quickly into original clay, which has the consistency of shale here. Once the hole gets more than a few inches deep, you can no longer swing the pickaxe and the shovel is the only instrument you have. But persistence pays, and by lunch time the hole was dug - that makes three. Next, the ducting.

At 11.20, oh joy, a mini digger arrived. We quickly set to work, finishing off the southern end of the platform, and then moving on to the last 30m at the northern end.

Don't want to come out, huh?

Further stretches of concrete were found, and our idea was to attack these with a bigger 3T digger, which of course didn't arrive. So back to the same modus operandi as last week - scrape off the dirt, and attack with a large hammer. Brian did the honours, very successfully. Resistance is useless! All the big bits of concrete were then manhandled into the dumper.

The end of CRC2A

When we got to the southern end of CRC2, we pushed the last 5m of spoil over the end, where there was a small shortage there. Then this bit was signed off.

More bricks arrive.

At lunch time, Richard arrived with the Fairview lorry and a number of pallets of bricks that he had brought down as surplus from Broadway. These are metric reds and blue seconds, which had recently been donated to us. We will put them to good use at CRC when we resume the brick laying.

After a short lunch, we resumed digging and dumping, until we reached the 85m point, with just 15m left to dig. Then, three things happened:

An English summer...

- It started to rain very hard indeed
- The water bowser arrived to dampen down the dust bowl around the level crossing. Talk about timing...
- The long awaited 3T digger arrived.

Too late! We swapped the diggers round, but in view of the downpour and little time left of the afternoon, we called it a day.