A day of excellent progress today. A gang of 10 enjoyed cool weather with plenty of sunshine and the occasional shower. Your blogger arrived a few minutes late, as he delivered another one of those enormously long ash disposal shovels to the loco dept. at Toddington. Although half of the 'spoon' was missing, this can be repaired it seems, and they were keen to have it, so back to the house of the donor to pick it up and somehow get it into the car. One end ended up in the front footwell, while the other touched the inside of the tailgate... we got there OK.

 By 08.30, Keith and John O were hard at work mixing concrete. This was required for the new 140m section, where a concrete strip is required to raise the foundations to the correct level for brick laying to start. It's a 10m strip, and each barrowfull advanced the work by 18ins. We reckoned that 15 barrowloads were needed, at 90 kg each. Say a ton and a half of concrete run down to the coal face. The barrows were very heavy, so we split the loads between the three of us.

Heave, Paul !

 A request came back that the last barrowload be extra big - we gave that one to push to Paul :-).

At the 140m coal face, John S and Tony were spreading each barrowload out nice and smooth over the strip. 90 concrete blocks have already been positioned at the rear, so next week we should be able to lay them on top of the concrete poured today.

Here is the concrete strip completed. In the foreground is Pete, preparing the 150m section for its first course of blues. This requires removal of any loose bricks from the foundations of the old wall, and cementing in replacements on a bed of mortar. In the background we can see Tony, John S and Bob working on the 120m section, with a final layer of corbelling being applied, and backed up. At the end of the day, we could say with some satisfaction that the 120m section is finished! In front of it is the 130m section, which now requires 3 rows of corbelling to finish. That's three days then, as only one row can be done per working day, each row having to 'go off' before the next is added on top of it.

Another load of concrete blocks arrives.

 Two courses of reds went down on the 120m section, on which you can see Tony working above. I say 'red' but as is plain to see, the actual bricks were yellow, because they were free, and you don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Meanwhile, Bob had the time to add a single row of blues to the new 150m section, jumping over the 140m section as it had the concrete drying on it. The 160m section is pegged out, and will be commenced next time. 210m is the ultimate target ! We are getting there, and with 150m now being worked on, that is just under three quarters of the way. Wow !

Don't even go there Keith, that is the last mini Swiss roll !

 After taking an extensive rest from concrete shifting, the non-bricklaying gang attacked the dwindling pile of bricks on top of the embankment. We started the day with 24 pallets up there (20 blues and 4 reds) and we ended the day with 21, so three pallets of reds were broken up, and ferried to the coal face. That's a ton and a half, and our backs knew it at the end of the day. We now have 8000 bricks left, for 80m not yet started. It does look as if some more will be required before we can finish the job, mostly reds as only one pallet of reds remains up there.

After a ton and a half of brick shifting. Tired, but healthy!

The many broken bricks in the picture above were found thus in the pallet, as we bought seconds and they are not perfect, for a much lower price of course.

An overview of the works at the end of the day.

In the picture above, you can see John S on the left pointing, Tony backing up with the yellow 'reds' , Bob laying a row of blues on the 150m section, and right in the distance, on the L/C, a delegation from the PWay examining the state of the L/C, which has not taken kindly to repeated use by giant dumper trucks and heavy lorries. It will be rebuilt very shortly, as soon as the Kier earth moving activity has been completed.

Finally, a picture which summarises our day - sunshine and showers. In this picture, you can see them both. In the background, beautiful Cleeve Hill, and view we enjoy every day when we have our tea. Aren't we lucky?

And now, an unexpected addendum:

What is going on here, you may rightly ask. Has the mating season for excavators begun?

In fact it is the start of works to grade the cutting side along platform 1. As readers may know, there has been an earth slip at the foot of the walkway down to the platform. There was too much material above the slag stone wall, and eventually it yielded and a whole lot of clay came down. This will now be addressed. The cutting side will be lightened and graded. There is a lot of material to remove, and the newly planted pine trees will be carefully removed and replanted at the end of the works, which will take up to 4 weeks. The lower excavator will do the grading, passing the material up to the second one in the foreground, which will load the material taken out on to a lorry. We will post with updates if possible.