West Vale Branch
Projects
Steppingstone Lane Bridge Restoration

Between 5 and 19 August WRG held two week-long camps at the Steppingstone Lane site erecting the bridge formers and laying bricks. A great deal of progress was made.

Week 1

The first week was spent erecting the formers for the bridge the create a temporary form of the bridge over which the arch can built

Considerable time and effort was required to ensure accuracy

While some concentrated on the formers, other made a start on the wing walls

The art of erecting bridge formers is not just to put them up accurately, but also to ensure you can get them outer once the arch in contructed

Much of the weight is taken by the scaffolding, but the double wedges along the foot of the arch allow fine level adjustments to be made and can be knocked out once the arch is complete to allow the formers to drop slightly and be removed

The formers are covered in narrow blanks and the thin plywood for smooth base to lay the bricks on

Engineering bricks must be used for the reconstruction of the arch

Most of the bricks were delivered to site by forklift, but a large number still had to be loaded and unloaded by hand

The first week's team worked hard on the middle Saturday try to complete the formers

The thin plywood had to be nailed carefully to the narrow planks

Despite the size of the audience there were very few "helpful" suggestions being made!

By the end of the morning the timber-laying was almost complete

WRGies are very hard workers, but here the malign influence of Alan (green sweatshirt, standing) has resulted in little activity

We are very grateful to the WRG volunteers for all their hard work