West Vale Branch
Projects
Steppingstone Lane Bridge Restoration

With preparatory work progressing well on-site the "blue box" used for storage of tools and materials has become almost full. This means that there is no where for the hard-pressed navvies to shelter from inclement weather or have a brew. It is also the best time of year for getting vehicular access to the site.

The plan was to move the larger of the two cabins donated by Vodafone from the Pocket Park to the bridge site. Three of us started work emptying the entire contents of our three containers at the Pocket Park so that it could sorted, tidied, the junk (a relative term) thrown out and the remainder put back in to two containers. When George Eycott (infamous for his low skittles scores) arrived just before 1pm with his Land Rover and trailer we had made good progress.

George started work jacking up the  cabin while finished sorting out the "stuff".

Unusually there were no major mishaps. Because the two Vodafone cabins were so close together, we had difficulty loading the large cabin on to the trailer. We could not reverse the trailer far enough under the jacked-up cabin for it to be safe, so we had to lower it on to the "beaver tail" of the trailer, move forward a little, jack it up again, reverse right under and lower it again - time-consuming but not problematic.

Because of the cramped nature of the bridge site, it was necessary to take two Land Rovers to site. The first vehicle delivered the cabin to site. The 18ft trailer was then turned by hand - fortunately the hand brake has recently been refurbished, otherwise it could well have ended up in the Cut! The cabin had to be left up on its legs while we wheeled the trailer past and under it, such was the lack of room! The second Land Rover then towed the trailer off site leaving room for the first vehicle to turn and leave in due course.

The day ended at 5:30pm - quite a marathon, but mission accomplished. Many thanks to George for all his help.