Another 150 blocks in the wall.

What a record day today! We were minus Jim, but plus Paul, and Paul threw himself (and us) at the wall with an unprecedented vigour. Well, when we say 'himself' it means Paul stood on the wall and we all had to jump to it. Poor old Maxie could hardly keep up.

You've all done very well - now work faster!

Whereas Jim would carefully trowel on a measured up amount of mortar and delicately place a concrete block upon it, Paul decided things weren't going fast enough. We have a building to put up, not a platform wall!

Paul stood on the blocks and shovelled the mortar on in great dollops, so that Neil, who was laying, could hardly keep up. In fact the whole supply line had difficulty keeping up.

First of all we had to get more concrete blocks to the coal face. We're beginning to run short here, and in fact at the end of the day there were none left.

This last pile of 80 was carefully carried over to the trolley by Dave in the Telehandler. Unfortunately Dave suffered from Telehandler driver's disease today.

Oooooops....

This manifests itself when they fail to observe the banksman's signals, because up there in the rarified atmosphere of their cabin they know better.

As a result the pile of 80 blocks promptly collapsed on being lowered on to the trolley.

We tried to tell you it wasn't on straight!

Never mind, it was just a small hiccough and no harm done. We just had to pick most of them up off the deck and back on to the trolley.

This was then pushed along the siding, where Paul was already spreading out the muck as fast as he could shovel it.

The wreckage of the block pile was lifted straight on to the wall, which began to rise with considerable speed. Paul stood on top and waved his arms about.

Then it started to drizzle, and the drops slowly became larger until, if we're honest, it was just plain raining.

Paul stood on top of the blocks and railed against the weather gods.

Gargle with this water, Maxie.

Maxie was under pressure as the mortar was being used twice as fast as normal. She had to be dragged out of her corrugated iron hut at a very early hour and then pushed, bumpety-bump, down the yard to the pallet pile where she liked to sit. 'Don't PUSH me', she exclaimed, but we had to to get her there somehow. She had a bit of a sore throat from last time but we gave a her a bucket of water to rinse with, and then she chuntered away happily, making all the mortar we needed.

Happy birthday, John! Many happy returns!

Lunch was taken in the mess coach nearby, and we all produced our salads. Sadly it was John's birthday, so that dietary plan was ruined by a goodly supply of chocolate cake and Swiss roll. They went down so well with the strong tea we like.

After lunch Dave had a second go at placing a pile of concrete blocks, with success this time. John told him just where to put it on the trolley.

The wall progressed nicely, and after lunch it reached the level of the first section last week, which was level 6 out of 11.

Further down the yard the PWay team today had returned from Toddington with some trolleys recovered from the winter work site there.

These were taken off the trailer and parked in a row on the trolley siding for future use.

We had two trains out today. Although it wasn't the gala any more they were still reasonably full as, we suppose, people hoped (correctly) that the B1 would still be out and about.

Here's the Bulleid Pacific just accelerating away from a signal stop.

It takes a fair bit of skill to lift the train from an almost standing start round the curve into the station, uphill and with wet rails. Today 35006 didn't slip, although we have seen her go when just running round, light engine.

The opposite train at Winchcombe was indeed hauled by the B1, still with lots of faces by the windows. Here too some skill is required by the driver to get the loco over the S curve at the end of the loop and then on to the main line, in the wet and on a curve. It all went swimmingly though.

Once clear of the pointwork the B1 could accelerate down towards Chicken Curve.

Paul's commanding position on the lofty height of the stretch of wall being built today got higher and higher. There are 4 courses, all laid today, underneath his boots!

The wall can now be seen from behind, here in the picture taken from the spot where the Usk building is going to go up. In the background the B1 came back from Broadway, but we're too busy working to give it much of a look.

Here's where we got to at the end of the day. We laid 5 rows of blocks on this section, a record for the Usk platform wall project. The top row is row 7 of the 11 we need to lay. Other sections to the left of course have far less to show for, so we still have a little to go. But that said, we reckon we laid 150 blocks today, almost 2 pallets worth and this means we are now out of them and need to order another shipment of 400. That will be our third already.

We all got rather damp today, without actually being soaked, but it was cold and wet all day long.

We reckoned we deserved a hot tea to warm us up, with Neil opting for a bottle of Rail Ale as a special treat.

Behind us we heard a rumble, and the class 45, the traditional diesel heading the final train south, glided majestically into platform 1.

At the controls was one of our own, Richard. No wonder it was our largest diesel that came out...


Back in a small workshop near Broadway, a cast iron sign was being prepared for the footbridge steps.

Can you see what it is yet? The sign was offered to us by a well wisher from his collection, following an appeal on the blog. They are quite rare, so were were very grateful, and thanks to this little act of  kindness, we now have the two we need for the Broadway footbridge steps.

The sign has been shot blasted and zinc coated. While that freshens up the tired and crumbly paint it had, it does mean that all the little letters have to be picked out in white again. It's very fiddly, this old font with its seriphs.

We got there in the end. This will be the P2 sign, so it will now go into storage for a little while.