A small team of 7 on site today - and that was a peak. We started with 4, and finished the day with 4. But the weather was kind, there was no rain, so construction could continue merrily. The first thing that happened was that Fairview came with another load of 140 concrete blocks, and 20 x 25Kg sacks of cement. I thought I blogged that last week? Here they are again....

Two more dumpy bags of aggregate came, and it quickly dawned on us what the intention was - make more concrete! Oh-oh. Readers may remember that we started the 140m, 150m and 160m sections, and the concrete was required for the foundation leveling of the 150m section. In fact during the day we prepared the 160m section for a layer of concrete, so we now know what faces us next week.

But first - dealing with the rain. We had a bit, since we were here last week. Despite covering up the work, the water managed to sneak in underneath the plastic sheeting, and  fill up the gaps in the metric reds. In this picture you can see Keith extracting the water, gap by gap, from each of the affected bricks. Tony can't wait for him to finish, it's a slow job. After some experimenting (towels, Windowlene bottle, bits of hosepipe etc) we hit upon the idea of a battery tester with the inside removed. You then have a pipette, with a bulb on the end. Works a treat !

Tony and Pete finished off the top of the120m section corbelled last week, but no work was done on the three remaining corbelling courses on the 130m section, as we had only one 'blue' brick layer, and as you can see in the picture,. Bob (for it is he) was on his hands and knees laying a first course of blue stretchers on the 160m section.
So what did we achieve today?
- 120m section finished off
- 150m section given a bed of concrete
- Two rows of blues and reds on the 140m section (picture above)
- One row of blues and blocks laid out on the 160m section
- One third of the blocks laid on the 140m section.

Quite good, isn't it?

But there were other things happening at CRC, it was the place to be. Much digging was going on at the top of the cutting behind platform 1.

View from the top of the cutting. There was a lot of clay here, very sticky indeed. I have proof!

View from CRC1. Man with gauge on the right.

View from CRC2

Yes, the contractors working on the landslip were still there, and working flat out all day (tea breaks excepted) with two excavators at once. The red one was grading the slope, aided by a man with a neat triangular gauge, showing him the slope that was needed, while the yellow excavator passed the material along the top of the bank to a pile, from which lorries could be loaded to take the surplus away.
By the end of the day, the work had pretty much reached the end of the section, but at the time of writing some decisions were still awaited about the retaining wall at the bottom. It appears you can still get slag stone, from Port Talbot! Let's hope they keep it original, and don't go overboard with visible modern materials.

As we stood on the top of the cutting, a rail borne vehicle flashed by underneath, and it wasn't a train. What the heck.....?

We tracked it down to the cutting at Hunting Butts. It was a road-railer with a flail, hired in by the company to do lineside clearance.This was the start of its session, and soon after it moved on up the line.

At the end of the day, your scribe went on to Bridge 5, and finally to Broadway - all sites of activity and progress. Check it out on the other blogs tomorrow.