Thankfully we have been lucky with the weather recently and have done more work on repairing and rebuilding the branch to A Bond.

EVEN MORE concrete sleepers have arrived and were stashed on wagons. These deliveries have almost finished now with enough in stock to relay the majority of the running line. Bob caught these photos of Crane 32 doing the honours with Henbury ready to tow them away.

A thankless task has been moving the stacks of concrete sleepers which were left on the trackbed in the new station area. The contractors employed to fix the wall of the New Cut and the Chocolate Path were meant to have installed these in ‘the gap’ but for some reason this was not done before the work site was cleared. We need to re-grade this area due to the height difference in the old running line and the new yard area, so the laborious work of moving all the sleepers had to be done by Larry and a few volunteers. Frustrating, but necessary to allow work to continue.
Chris cleared the last few earlier last week leaving the platform road clear.

At the weekend we were then able to drag another 30-foot rail into position at the railhead and begin to hammer keys into every other rail chair to give the track some rigidity. Then, using a turfer ratchet chain thingy we slewed the 60-foot panel to begin making a gently curve towards the station.
The view at the end of the day shows the new curve as well as the height discrepancy between the new track and the old. The old railhead will need jacking up and re-packing underneath once it’s been connected to the new panel.