The last brick - again !

It was a lovely sunny day today, and 5 volunteers made it down to CRC to fine tune the completion of the platform wall.

At the bottom of the completed northern ramp a little extra brickwork was need to help set out the footpath to the barrow crossing. John S did the honours here. It was hot today; CRC2 stalwarts have long memories of the cold and rainy winter, and keep their woolly hats and jackets on !

Here you can see the nicely finished slope down to the ground at the northern end. Almost all the stacks of bricks on the left have gone, and now it's time to lay the remaining drain pipes to the end. They fit inside each other, but you put some silicone gel on, and here we see JC give the end of the pipe a little prod so that the other end slips in nicely. Lots of banter about that in the cabin !

After the pipes are laid, they are boxed in with scaffolding boards and the void is filled in with pea gravel. In the bad old days we used to have to load two barrows' worth on to the PWay trolley and trundle it down the track, but now that 'the end is near' we can just wheel a load down to the place it's needed. So easy, it's making Brian smile. And he's found a barrow without a flat tire too.

After pea gravelling, the team set out for the other end of the wall to build the next step. Now that is a long walk, so the trolley was pressed back into service. Here are Keith and JC with a barrow of fresh concrete on their way south.

On arrival at the southern end, this is what they did with it. Having built a foundation and the first step last week, a second step was cast today. While Keith looks on, JC gives the step a nice smooth finish.

While the step casting was going on, Brian was on painting duty nearby. The new running in board posts needed a final topcoat for extra protection.

Once this is dry, it is ready for the board itself to be bolted on. It has already been fabricated off site.

Rumour has it that Pete from B & S has this 12ft board secreted somewhere behind the sofa at home. You can bring it now, Pete !

Amazingly, the gang had done all this by 10 am, so after a short tea break, they moved on to Broadway. What they did there will appear on the Broadway blog in an hour or so.




So what happens next at CRC2? We need to organise some good quality infill material. Initially we thought we could get some leftovers from the contractors building the new stand at the racecourse, but they have passed the demolition stage and that source has now dried up, alas.

As a number of key personnel will be on holiday and there is a bank holiday Monday coming up as well, it is likely that the infilling will take place in early June. The slabs will follow shortly after. The remaining Mondays in May will therefore take place at Broadway. So try the Broadway blog on Mondays for a while.