Work has resumed after the weekend, so here is our report and update, mostly as per Tuesday pm. The weather remains exceptionally good, so much progress is being made. We start off with:

Bridge 1, Broadway

The southern side trackbed was smoothed over by the mini digger and brought up to the bridge deck level today, ready for the bringing in of fresh ballast.
At the northern end (above), Cotswold stone gravel was emptied into the void behind the abutment, in order to allow water that flows off the deck to drain away down the sides.

Just a few yards away, at:

Bridge 2, Childswickham Road

Bridge 2 all wrapped up for shot blasting

The scaffolding and total encapsulation of this bridge is now complete. Shotblasting started on Monday and is about 25% complete (Tuesday pm), with most of the initial rough taken off. The shot blaster Tramblast was also busy on Wednesday, as could be seen from the Broadway site today. The initial shot blasting has revealed quite a lot of damage and rust:

Outer girder bottom flange damage

Outer girder impact damage.

The above two pictures at bridge 2 show evidence of violent meetings with road vehicles carrying over height loads. They did not leave their names and addresses !

 This picture of the centre girder shows typical plate end corrosion...

...while these outer plate ends have also had the visit of the tin worm, but have not yet been shot blasted to reveal the full extent of the damage. We then move on to:

Bridge 4, Peasebrook Farm
The main issue here is the really poor quality of the troughing.

Bridge 4 troughing ends

1    This picture shows the end of the steel troughing, and the poor quality of concrete filling the troughs. As you can see it contains bits of brick and rubble so has virtually no useful strength. A completely new scheme is having to be designed to take account of all of the corrosion problems and poor concrete that have been revealed.

We finish with a shot of the downside parapet railings, now all bolted up. Finally, we move on to:

Bridge 5, Little Buckland.
This is now open to road traffic again. Above the road, final preparations are being made to complete all the works.

In this picture, we can see how the waterproofing is secured to the hidden ballast retaining wall concrete. Neat, that should stop the rain from sneaking underneath and starting off the rust.

 How the wing wall used to meet the abutment at Little Buckland.

Upside wing wall and pilaster.

Now look at the wing wall - isn't that better? What a neat job.