West Vale Branch
Projects
Steppingstone Lane Bridge Restoration

The day started with a hard frost and mist. The plan was to move two temporary secure containers - a 10ft cargo container and a donated Vodafone cabin - to site and then make a start on moving some equipment into them. It wasn't quite that simple.

Our latest recruit, Andrew, had managed to borrow a tractor and tipping trailer for the day. Orph had arranged for a lorry with a lifting arm to help with the loading.

Whilst waiting for the lift to arrive we loaded our digger on to the trailer with the aid of a ramp. Andrew and Chris then set off to drop the digger on-site.

The digger was taking a long time to be delivered and meanwhile the lift had arrived. We could only have the services of the lift for a short time, so it was decided to lift the container on to temporary supports so that the trailer could then be reversed under it and the supports removed with the aid of a jack.

During the lifting of the container the tractor returned with the digger still on the trailer - it was refusing to start. I set off to buy a can of EasyStart to assist the digger - even this simple task was made exceedingly difficult. NTL (not BT, Orph assures us!) is digging up the main Oxford to Swindon road at either end of the Shrivenham by-pass. A task that should have taken 10 minutes ended up taking 45 minutes. By the time I returned, the digger had been driven off the trailer with its starter motor and the trailer was now being loaded with the container. (See picture, right.)

We secured the container and five of us set off towards site to help with the unloading.

Here you can see the tractor approaching site. This track was once the main road from Shrivenham to Bourton! We have given an undertaken to return the track to its present state after works on the bridge are completed.

Is this the last vehicle to
cross the "bridge"
prior to restoration?

At this point things went from bad to worse. We had intended to drop the container out of sight on the canal bank. Difficulties (an understatement if ever there was one!) caused by the wet conditions (we had to start the work this weekend or else risk disturbing nesting birds later in the year) and the need to avoid damaging crops meant we had to abandon this plan and leave the container in the field adjacent to the canal bank. All in all it was a truly awful operation - those who were there will not want to go through anything similar again. Lessons have been learnt. To the right you can the container in its new surroundings.

Meanwhile back at the park the digger was still refusing to co-operate. All we could do was drag it back to its container. By now its battery had very little juice left and for loading on to its sledge and final maneuvering it had to be hooked up to a car alongside like an enormous life-support machine.

It was certainly the least successful Work Party I've been involved with. Things can surely only get better as we progress with the restoration.