The bank holiday weekend is over, and we can offer you a further update on the bridge works. Here we go:

Bridge 1, Broadway.

Watching Tramblast set up on Saturday

Now that the fabricators have completed the works under the bridge, blast cleaning continued through Friday & Saturday, with all of the repaired steel areas getting cleaned, primed and undercoated, plus a further undercoat on some of the upper areas of steel as well.

With the weather a bit rough today, Roberto had moved inside and to ground level, and was cleaning both of the abutment walls. They are going to look like new!
 

Abutment wall cleaned on the upper level.

The last of the deck patches have now been given a waterproofing primer. Given the heavy rain today, it was good to see that the drip strips welded on to the ends of the deck plates were doing their job, by stopping the water running back along the undersides of the plates.

Here is a selection of views of the repaired areas, now shot blasted a with a coat of primer on:
 

Cross beam repair in undercoat. Check out the rows of new bolts!

Rail bearer repair in undercoat, with new joggle plate.

 

 

 

 

 

Outer girder flange in undercoat, up side.

Ditto, down side

Meanwhile, two miles away at:

Bridge 5, Little Buckland

More concrete was poured here, despite the weather:

Top face of abutment strengthening, Broadway end.

Broadway end, down side wing wall pour now completed

Upside wing wall strengthening completed.

The twin concrete pours to the top lifts behind both abutments were completed this morning, despite constant rain. It's good to see this progress, in the face of the heavy rain we've had these last 24 hours. The forecast looks better for the rest of the week - we'll be active at Broadway, so check out their blog tomorrow night! Your blogger will be packing his sandwiches after completing this post....