Work proceeds every day, and we don't want to miss out on a thing. Do we have some sort of a home life? It seems not.... we couldn't resist another look, and indeed, there has been good further progress.

Here is today's report:

Bridge 1, Broadway


Progress is continuing in many areas – (not easy to photograph!) and the final plate has been removed from the last corroded cross beam, with the usual rivet removal problem. This plate has been taken back to the works as a template for drilling the replacement. Nearly all of the bolts have been fitted to the new bottom flange plates of the downside outer main girder:

The majority, 4 rows wide, pinning 2 flange plates to the flange angles, are just visible in the distance.

Bridge 5, Little Buckland

On the south abutment the shuttering has been stripped from pour 2, and stone backfill has been brought in. 

Note the roller which has been used for layered consolidation of the fill. Back of abutment drainage has been installed and extended to run around the end of the wing walls (see photo - black pipe emerging centre top). 

On the north abutment some extremely tricky shuttering is almost completed ready for the next pour (hopefully on Monday). From the photo you can clearly see the “banana” shape of the concrete that is required, at the rear of the abutment, to link in with that behind the wing walls.

Even trickier is the shuttering to the north west wing wall. The original was in brick up to 2m thick and this is to be replaced by mass of concrete with a skin of 225mm thick facing brickwork, to be built once the concrete has been completed. 

The last two photos don’t really show fully the setting out difficulties that were involved. The base steps up following the external ground contours, but the top slopes down following the gradient of the yet to be replaced embankment. The main complication has been that the wall was due to slope at 1:6 (in accordance with the original 110 year old drawings), but when the face line was extended to deck level there was no room for backing concrete to the abutment itself, which is extremely important. On checking the other 3 wing walls we found that the slopes varied from 1: 7.5, to 1:11 & 1:13. After many deliberations a slope of 1:7.5 was settled on as the best outcome (note the 4” x 2” batten attached to the wall to establish the final 1 :7.5 wall slope- carefully aligned with the shuttering in the photograph!!). Who said how great the Victorian builders were ????

If the concrete pour does go ahead on Monday, we will report further. If only the 'Bridges to Broadway' appeal had a pound for every click on this blog... over 34.000 hits so far, who would have thought it ! We would have achieved our target then. The share appeal closes on 31st October, not long now.