With the Easter school holidays, it was breeze to get to CRC, and we had a nice dry, breezy day at work, achieving further great progress with brick laying.

What with the platform wall getting ever nearer the end, it's getting a bit tricky to get a good overall picture, so try this one from up the starter signal. Here is the position near the beginning of the day. Rain was forecast for later, so we got on with the job and John O was under pressure to supply 4, and later 5 brick layers. All the technical stuff like concrete beds and laying concrete blocks is now over, so today was just pure, unadulterated brick laying. At the end of the day, we reckoned we got through 1000 of them ! That's 2 1/2 pallets. And all of us retired, too !

What the.....? Who did this???

Of course, if you want to lay bricks at a steady pace, what you don't want to find is surprises in your mix.

Here's Tony with the biggest rock he's ever found in a pile of mortar on his spot.

John O humbly presented his 10.000 apologies. It seems he was trying to save sand, and dug well down into the pile. So rocks are at the bottom of it?

Unencumbered by rocks in the mortar, Tony did a cracking job and laid 4 courses on the slope at the end, and two courses on the penultimate section. There are now only 3 sections remaining to be worked on - 180m, 190m, and 200m (the slope). In front of Tony is Bob, who worked in parallel and laid a similar number of rows along the front. We pointed out to Bob that, finally, he no longer had to use his knee pads and work on his hands and knees in the dirt, but both he and Tony found that working half upright, bent over, was much more unpleasant, and the backs hurt. Not long now, guys !

A bit further along, JC laid three rows of blues along the front of the 180m section, thus bringing it up to first corbellling row height. John then switched to the rear, where he joined John S backing up to keep the top of the wall at the same height all round.

Looking back at the end of the day, we reckon we should have the wall finished by the end of April, given a smaller team over the Easter holidays (we will not be working Easter Monday, but probably the Tuesday after.)

Over on CRC1, a delegation met to discuss the slagstone wall at the foot of the recently regraded slopes. There was much expansive arm waving, and from a distance the plans looked very expensive.... then your blogger was spotted! Smiles all round.

 
Away from CRC2, preparations have been made to replace the broken CRC2 running in board with a replica of the original one, which was there (at least) until the late 1960's.

Here are the two posts, with authentic one inch thick brackets. Cast iron finials have also been sourced, and a new board has been made by B & S. As the posts and finials have been sourced by a Broadway member, here's a good example of inter-station cooperation!

Today's job was to test the fettled finials for fit (passed, at last, after much grinding in the garage) and to give the bottom of the posts a coat of bitumen paint. Sticky stuff, bitumen...

Outside CRC booking office, some sort of Anderson shelter was being assembled. This looks to become a guard hut for the forthcoming forties event. My suggestion that it should really be dug 6 feet into the ground was not taken up with any enthusiasm! Won't be very bomb proof then.

Here's our end of the day shot of the works. No fewer than four barrows of mortar are lined up, with Brian hoping for takers.
You can just about make out that JC has laid 3 rows of blues along the 180m stretch in the foreground. (darker mortar in the joints). Corbelling next, here. A row of garden chairs outside the cabin is a sign that spring is here - we are sitting outside again!  What a fine thing it is to sit with your cup of tea, mini roll in the other hand, and enjoy the view to the ridge at Cleeve Hill.

Mice: One. They very carefully nibbled away the peanut butter bait on the other trap, without setting it off. How do they do that? Mice are cunning...

Back Tuesday after Easter. Thanks for checking in.