A day of great progress today - 10 people on site, with 6 of them laying bricks and blocks. The muck makers could hardly keep up. As your blogger opened his car door on arrival, the very first thing he heard was 'Coooooompo' ! Stress ! Better get my running shoes on.

With 6 brick layers, you straight away need 3 different types of mortar - black (but not too black), brown stiff and brown sloppy. And of course they all cry out at the same time. Poor old John O was worked off his feet, while Brian and Keith ran up and down with the barrows and shovels to resupply the spots.
In this our opening picture you can see backing up going on, Bob having done the last current row of corbelling on the 170m section all on his own on Wednesday. Well, that certainly kicks the job along. So here you can see Tony and JC finishing off the 170m section with a coating of sloppy brown on top, while Keith hovers anxiously to make sure they have everything they need. Nothing is worse than a bricklayer without supplies!

Tony then moved on to the 180m section. Today 2 rows were added to the front here, and Tony filled in the middle and raised the rear by 3 rows. All done while bent over, the backs do complain at the end of the day.

During a brief interlude Fairview came with fresh supplies of cement, sand and blocks. Here we see them lifting the blocks straight on to the trolley, so that they can be rolled down to the coal face and laid out ready for Peter 'the block' Q to lay them on the 190m section.

And here he goes, centre stage, he's already almost half way. Peter is laying from the left, and laying from the right is, erm, Peter. They met in the middle shortly afterwards. The row of blocks always makes that section look a lot more considerable, where it was but a plain stretch of concrete base a week earlier.

Having done the blocks, Peter Q moved straight on to laying blues at the back, which we see him doing here crossing over from the 200m section to the 190m one.

Brian on the mortar run could barely keep up, and then found himself with a soft tyre to boot. That makes the barrow twice as hard to push. Helpfully the cheap tyre on the wheel says 'maximum 35lbs pressure' but we know from experience that they can blow up with a loud bang at only 29lbs! So easy on the pump there. The reinforcement on that tyre is made of string! We saw it spill out when it blew up the other day.

As readers know we work on Mondays, and there aren't any trains then. Today we got a treat, with Dinmore Manor rolling in with a marketing special. It was well loaded, so that bodes well for future passenger numbers.

The fine Gentlefolk looked down upon the grubby workers with champagne in their hands. Champagne? Oh no, it was tea after all.
Lots of people milled about on the platform and it looked like a very successful event. In a few months from now, you can pull into platform 2, we'll see to that.

At the 'sharp end' of operations, the bottom of the downward slope on the last section, Bob and Pete made amazing progress. You can see the slope rising clearly, and at the highest end they had laid 4 rows of bricks, some kind of a record. The dry weather contributed to that, but it remained chilly after a brief patch of sun during our elevenses.

During tea time, Bob proudly marked off the next section - 170m done, 180m, 190m and the slope already off to a good start. Not long now.





Today was also the day for the delivery of over 200 platform slabs. They came down from the Newark area, so the arrival time was a bit uncertain. While we waited, we decided to do a bit of pea gravelling. We operate a division of labour policy here, grubby workers, and management:

' It's not full yet'

The finally at 15.00 the first of the two lorries with 110 slabs arrived:

We parked him on the Race Course side, and ran the slabs into the little footpath area, from where we will load them on to the trailer of the road railer that we will be using to place the slabs in what looks like May at the moment. We have a complete week of slab laying planned for this, but the final date is not yet quite decided (we need to be sure the wall and associated works are finished).

Our parting shot is an unusual one, from above. It wasn't taken by a drone, but by your blogger wobbling on top of a signal post.

You can see the exact extent of our progress up here. 170m is finished, 180m and 190m work in progress and well advanced, and 200m with its slope already well defined.

Bob is on his knees in the distance doing pointing, a chore at the end of each day, but it does make the job look so professional. Peter is covering the work with sheeting to protect it until next time.

Tuesday is a day of rest, so see you at Broadway on Wednesday for further progress on the signal box roof !