Work at CRC2 has resumed at a cracking pace, and your blogger has been repatriated from deepest France, no expense spared. Excuse the faintest whiff of Garlic in this posting, the stuff is very clinging. The English drizzle today wasn't strong enough to counteract all traces of the French.

During the last two weeks the blogger may have been away, but the CRC2 crew were certainly at work. They have set out the next three sections, prepared the foundations for brick laying, and laid the first courses on the new 110m stretch. Readers may remember that we paused at 100m (out of 220m total length, including the northern ramp) to do the back filling and lamp post posting.We've got all the ducting in, and the fill is now settling down and compacting. Onwards to the new bit!

Today we had 8 volunteers on site. Eight! I was impressed.

The mixer was humming away when I arrived at a 'late' 08.45. It was making up concrete, and several loads of this were ferried down to the coal face by Brian and John. The purpose there was to raise the level of the foundations by a few inches over a lengthy strip, so that it was the right height to lay bricks up to the required platform level. This foundation 'start' varies every few yards, as the new concrete foundation goes up in steps, while the platform top is on a gentle slope, reflecting the level of the rails. This makes it impossible to lay the first bricks in an identical manner all away along the job - every bit is different.

At the start of the day, the job looked like this:

John S is backing up the 110m stretch, John C and Bob are laying blues on the 120m. The unstarted 130m bit is in the foreground. Next to Bob you can see the strip where the concrete was poured. After we had mixed enough concrete, four of us decided to get out the ladder chain again and bring down some blues from what we thought were two packets on top of the embankment, near the place where they would be wanted. Great. We'll soon have those down.
We thought.

You know what it's like when you get over the top of a hill, and then there is another one? Well, in our case the two visible packs of blues turned into 9 - arrgghhhh ! But with some persistence, and two men at the top, two men at the bottom, we cleared four of the packs of blues, or about 1800 individual bricks that all went down the slide. Half of them were stocked at the bottom of the slide, near the coal face, and the other half was loaded on to the trolley and wheeled some distance along for future use.

In the picture above, Brian and Keith are emptying the trolley again, double handling, unfortunately. After quite some head scratching, it occurs to us that our job would be made considerably easier if we had the use of a fork lift for a day. You can see from the picture that we are now much closer to the northern end, and some of the packs could be lifted straight on to the trolley by a fork lift, so that we only have to unload them. We also have some reds from Broadway to clear near the signal box - these are second hand, and are coming in really useful (a big thank you to Terry and Paul, by the way).

Broadway reds wheeled down to the coal face, and being unloaded. The pile of stones in the background marks the half way point along the platform. To the right of this is the site of the former waiting room. New lamp posts in the distance.

Two Johns attack the first of the new sections, at 110m.

Bob on his knees, in the ballast. It's hard to stand up afterwards!

At the end of the day, we had laid two courses of blues on both the 110m and 120m sections, both of which were backed up by John S with reds. As you can see from the picture above, Bob also managed to get in a first course of blues on the third new section, at 130m. This section was lined in (temporary) concrete blocks at the end of the day, so that we can put in a layer of concrete first thing next time we come. All the brick laying then had to be pointed at the end of the day, which is always very time consuming. Pointing needs black mortar, but oh, what is this?

It seems the mixer fell over into the barrow, as the mortar was being poured out. Well, to make an omelette, you have to break eggs. Did you manage to sneak the load past Bob, without him noticing, John?

It was a day of satisfying progress, and most important of all, of good humour. It's good to be back.