Just half a dozen

Thursday 10^th September

Another week with more team members away than attending, but a different set and for different reasons. However, we were able to progress both the rebuilding at 31A and the programme of clearance and inspections.

Polly and Peter continued with the rebuild of the up side exit headwall of cross drain 31A. This is almost complete – just one more course of coping bricks to finish.

The new headwall of 31A outlet almost complete. Note the use of steel bar to support the final courses. [Photo by Peter]

Jonathan, Martin (J) and Andrew headed to Little Buckland to continue this year’s round of culvert and cross drain clearance and inspection. After attending to some H&S issues, Roger joined them later.

The first tasks at Little Buckland were to clear a space on the embankment to enable us to park vehicles on the vacant trackbed (the former down line here) at least 3m away from the nearest rail of the running line. Also attended to were the roadside gullies underneath the bridge – this was mainly removal of grass rather than silt as the dry summer has meant very little run off from the road in the past three months.

One of the roadside gullies under bridge 5 (Little Buckland) prior to removals of the vegetation. [Photo by Jonathan]

The group then cleared and inspected cross drains 5A, 5B and 5D. Not surprisingly because of the dry summer, none of these were flowing. However, there was considerable growth, particularly in the exit ditch of 5A and in the toe ditch on the down side of the line by Archer Farm.

The 5A exit ditch on the up side high mileage of bridge 5 forms the boundary of the railway land but is outside of the fence line. All cleared after sterling work by Martin(J). [Photo by Jonathan]

Roger and Martin(J) pause work as 2807 passes over bridge 5 with the 11.35 down train from Broadway.

Bone dry - the inlet end of the bore of 5B.

The final task of the day was the clearing of the access at Laverton Meadow Lane bridge (6). We omitted tackling culvert 5C as there is nowhere safe to park a vehicle near it. Hopefully with a larger group we will include that next week.

Wildlife report: A sign that the summer is definitely over was a group of swallows congregating on electric wires at Little Buckland prior to starting their migration south. Still lots of ripe blackberries in the hedges. The dry summer seems to have had not effect on the growth of brambles, nettles and old-man’s beard.