West
Vale Branch |
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| 17 & 24
November 2001 Operations recommence |
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| Following the disastrous
February work party and then the delay while Foot-and-Mouth ran its
course, it was a relief to get back to some active restoration.
The first task was to construct the bridleway diversion. This will go over the western coffer dam and then through the small copse on the south side - see the schematic for details. In order to prevent damage to the bridleway, we had negotiated with the local farmer to deliver 20 tons of scalpings across his field. However, we had difficulty in letting a contract for the delivery and the field was ploughed in before the scalpings could be delivered. Thus they were delivered to the canalside car park, almost a mile away, to await us delivering them to the bridge site. It was proposed that we had two work parties in November so that we could get the scalpings to site and cut through the small copse to link the diversion with the extant bridleway. The first weekend we hired a 3 ton dumper, large enough to reduce the number of trips down the bridleway to the absolute minimum. Unfortunately, we only achieved 4 deliveries as the hydraulics failed and the dumper refused to turn right! The following weekend, dumper repaired, we tried again. We started early to ensure that we completed the task in daylight but the best plans never run true! When we started our Kubota mini-digger that was to be used to load the dumper, it was found that the a connecting rod between the lever and the blade control valve had sheared and the blade was stuck in the down position! Whilst 3 stalwarts loaded the dumper in true navvy style (using shovels!), Orph Mable was able to jury rig the digger to enable the blade to be lifted. By mid-morning we were fully mechanised again and Phil Large was able to use the both the digger and dumper to move the scalpings single handed. This freed of the rest of the work party to move down to the bridge and start clearing the diversion route. By mid-afternoon there was only about 1 ton of scalpings left on the car park, when again the dumper started to refuse to turn right so couldn’t be used for this last load. Undaunted, Phil Large and Orph Mable used our little towpath tractor (converted lawnmower!) and trailer to clear the car park of scalpings by moving them to our storage area. So by the end of the day the scalpings were on-site, and the diversion cut through ready for a few stumps to be pulled next time. The December and January work parties should see the completion of the diversion.
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