West
Vale Branch |
Busy! Busy or what, things have been hectic here with everything and everyone concentrating their efforts on Steppingstone Bridge. As you will remember we were expecting two, week-long summer camps from WRG in August, well they have been and what progress - and they are to return again soon - and what a superb job they are doing. We couldn't do it without them!
But what a logistics nightmare! It really pushed our small branch to its limits but it was worth it. Too long a tale to repeat here so just a list of the heavier stuff that needed to be hauled to site down a half-mile long country bridleway, but it is, after all, downhill!
- Bridge formers - steel - span 19ft - 9 ft high - 130Kgs each - 20 off
- Timber - 4.6 M by 80 mm by 50mm 140 off
- Ply sheets 8 ft by 4 ft 14 off
- Sand - 20 tonnes, Cement - 2 tonnes, Lime - 1 tonne.
- Bricks engineering - 6000
- Scaffold tubes and planks. Lots
- Pumps, hydraulic breakers, generators and cement mixers.
Then there was all the setting out to do - I didn't realise that restoring a small, simple bridleway bridge could be so complex - believe me it is! Too complex to repeat here - even if I understood it all! Then there was the accommodation to sort out - and the finance - and the on-site politics - and the method statements - and the risk assessments - and the endless other paperwork and the large Ash tree blown down across the cemetery path and the park grass and the - and the --- and the -----! You must have got the message by now --- we've been busy - also we really could do with more help!
I shouldn't really single out any one person from the branch for praise, (or indeed from elsewhere as we have had greatly appreciated help from all over) - BUT without the superb efforts of our WPO, Chris Forward, it would just NOT have happened. [Hear, hear - Ed.]
Anyway - well done everyone. Press on - a long way to go yet!
Photos appear elsewhere in DF.Yours exhausted, and I, mostly, only watched ---
Alan Norris
Branch Chairman
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