Wednesday 22 February

A dull windy day. I wandered down towards Bridge 1 and saw the newly delivered 30 ft panels of track freshly delivered, with more due in a few days. The bullhead is still bright steel on top!  Starting soon, these must be dismantled to allow the rails to be welded up into 60 fts, with the help of something to lift the panels off the stack and move the rails etc around.

I also took a look at the newly placed bridges once more, now that the walkways have been finished off and very impressive the whole project looks. Notches have been cut in the parapets of Bridge 2 to allow the trains on and off the bridge, in due course, and also to allow excavators to access westwards. As a result, Bridge 1's eastern abutment now sports a large hole behind it,  ready for formwork and placing of concrete, to take the bridge span kit.

Back at base we began reviewing the contents of the right hand van body to see what could be discarded immediately, as the start of our preparations for relocating to somewhere beyond the loading pad once the initial tracklaying work has finished. We have quite a few  heritage artefacts stored, buried behind the clutter. In the mess van our new volunteer cook did us proud with a juicy-fry up, and the office area now sports a built-in counter and looks to be fully clad already.  We also heard that plans to further improve the shop and visitor centre/museum area have been approved to proceed.    SG