With the much nicer weather, holidays are starting to make an impact. We were two brick layers down today, and only 6 people in all. John O wasn't able to come today (most unusual) and Keith took over as chief mortar maker and bottle washer.

Bob was the only one in front, and he addressed the second row of corbelling of the 180m section with vigour. Tony backed him up on the rear, so that at the end of the day a complete layer was laid here. One more to go - Bob thought he might sneak back on Wednesday and polish that one off.

Here you can see the result of Bob's corbelling drive today, a 10m long row of carefully laid bricks. Each one is fitted with its own counterweight. Only 2 more sections, 190m and 200m, remain behind him. The brick piles in the void behind the wall are now looking quite anemic. Will we have to bring down a last pallet full? Four pallets of metric blues remain, still in their wrappers.

Then, suddenly, brick laying slowed right down.... a visit by Ron, head of B & S, to chew the fat. Looks rather like two neighbours chatting over their wall.

By the way, B & S is a fascinating but relatively unknown department. They do all sorts of interesting building work around the railway. They do need a bigger gang really, so if you are at all interested in helping out there, do get in touch with them. Their HQ is in the yard at Winchcombe.

As our two, later three, brick layers did not need as much mortar as usual, yours truly and Brian set off for the other end of the now incredibly long platform. Here we started digging the holes for the posts of the platform 2 running in board. This exists, but is currently a kit of parts which will shortly be assembled at the appointed spot. We dug a 60cm deep hole at the foot of the remains of the slagstone wall. This was harder than it sounds...

Once we were through the layer of ash that used to form the top of the platform, we hit what we believe is called Mudstone, a dry compacted clay like layer which over the millions of years had almost hardened to stone. Some of the lumps we got out were as big as rocks, and we threw them out by hand. Here Brian is contemplating the hole... we both have bad backs, and are no longer quite as energetic as in our distant youth.
We did get to the bottom of this hole without further back injury (mine first started over 20 years ago on the PWay of the KESR) and over the years you learn to get to know your back, and how far you can go.

I think we have posted this sort of picture before, but here is one of the many fossils that we found in the original subsoil. It's an Ammonite, and Brian tells me the name comes from the Egyptian God whose earthly figure is a ram, with horns just like the coils that you can see. I never knew that....

After lunch came the 'moment supreme' - we walked up to the ticket office and collected one replica running in board post, LH side. This was made for us by The Iron Works and Gate Co, a friendly firm of supportive fabricators in Malmesbury. Thank you, Chris Evans!

We went to a lot of trouble to get the brackets right, and the dimensions for CRC, which are unique to the station. Yours truly naively thought that a post bearing a board for 'TODDINGTON' would have the same bracket spacings as another with a similar name, ie 'GOTHERINGTON'. Not so of course, the Toddington brackets are slightly further apart. Natch. This is how you learn.

One post is now in, and has concrete shoes. It's the red job in the picture; we gave it an extra coat of primer just to make sure that it won't rust now that it's outdoors. Once both posts are in, we will put the finials on. They are made of cast iron and were copied from an original found at Broadway. We want this board to look genuine! Next week we will put up the other post, using a special former, shaped like the final running in board, which will ensure that the posts are the correct distance apart. Once the concrete has set, we take down the former, and bolt in the name board instead - Bob's your uncle! We have done this before of course, at Broadway.

Here's our final shot of the day: 180m corbelling just visible on the right, then two rows, front and back, on the 190m section. Looks quite chunky. The brick laying still to do is mostly determined by the corbelling, which is very time consuming. There are another 7 x 10m stretches to go (one to finish the 180m section, and three each on the last two sections to the bottom of the slope).