A dual report today - progress on the bridges to Broadway, and also a look at some of our other bridges along the line. We don't often talk about those, but they are not forgotten. Indeed, as you will see, we keep a very close eye on them.

So, on Broadway, here's a look at work on the three bridges currently being worked on:

Bridge 2, Childswickham Road
Further to our report on Wednesday showing the fabricators at work, we have three more shots of the corrosion damage and measures being taken to address it:

This is a shot of where we have had to enlarge a corrosion hole through a girder end to remove piles of muck, corrosion and who knows what about 150mm thick. This simply helps keep the steel wet, so encouraging faster rot! It has to be removed, and be replaced with proper drainage and access.

Corrosion of a main girder end

And finally, a very tricky repair to a track bearer end (Broadway side), including (just visible) the replacement of a section of the bottom flange plate. Not a lot left of our original bridge here...

Bridge 4, Peasebrook Farm

Here the concrete break out (it is weak concrete, and didn’t take much effort!) and removal is almost complete...

Exposing the troughing

Damage underneath the troughing - trains will have to rumble over this

... and a picture of the holes through the end – just to remind people why we are having to do this. The ends are the critical points where the weight of the trains is transferred onto the bearings, or not in the picture above! As reported earlier, a technical solution has been agreed, but no doubt at extra cost.

Bridge 5, Little Buckland

Below is a shot of the deck with the ballast boards all finished (before the off cuts & sawdust were cleared up of course). Unfortunately the gales on Tuesday severely displaced a lot of the neatly laid waterproofing protection mat. This will soon be straightened again, and covered with ballast.

In the picture, we are looking south. 800yds away is the railhead at Laverton :-)

Now, as they say on TV, ' in other news tonight'.....

Bridges 32 (Prescott Road) and Bridge 34 (our largest, Gotherington skew bridge)

Another activity on Bridges is the need to carry out inspections. We aim to try and inspect all major structures and as many minor (mainly culverts ) as we can, each year. This is done on a visual basis working from the ground or on the bridge, taking photos & writing reports.

In addition we then carry out Principal (detailed) Inspections, using the services of a Consulting Engineer, on a 6 year rolling programme basis. This involves hiring in a cherry picker so that we can see the critical areas on the tops of the abutments, where most corrosion arises. This happens due to the poor maintenance access availability, leading to heavy and extensive corrosion, which has created so many of the problems now being repaired on bridges 1 to 5.

Because of the narrow roads and the need for a cherry picker, we also have to provide traffic management, (lights, signs, cones, etc) to keep the operation safe for our men and the general public.

Below are shots of bridge 34 -Gotherington skew bridge (our largest) – note the lady assistant engineer, in yellow, and 32 – Prescott Road, almost our most hazardous. Both of these were done with traffic lights controlling a single lane system. Because of the safety distances required the lights are not visible in the photos.

We also did bridge 28 (Stanley Pontlarge) and in 10 days time will be doing a further 5, where access will be obtained from track level on our service road. Again a cherry picker will be involved.

Detailed reports will follow on the basis of which a priority list of repairs will be compiled - hopefully not too many.

Finally, here is a shot of one poor connection under the running line on bridge 34. It looks worse than it actually is because of the highly coloured corrosion.

Evil looking, but mostly surface corrosion (for now)

Money continues to dribble in on the share issue, but will it be enough to cover all the extra costs? Or even rails for the extension? One more week of the EIS scheme remains.