Part of the SRPS's Bo'ness & Kinneil Railway
Weeds where do they come from!! Saturday was taken up in weeding the platform garden and cutting back flowered plants, the area around the old Lamp Hut requiring special attention. Monday saw the return of the Monday / Civils squad who where busy preparing the kicker shuttering ready for the final cement pour for the 2nd platform build project.
During August the society’s Railtour’s team have been running a highly successful trip of the Fife Circle & Tweedbank route fronted by LMS 4-6-0 Black 5 number 44871 with West Coast Railway’s class 37 number 37685 ‘Loch Arkaig’ at its rear. Below are a couple of pictures as they and a stock of SRPS coaches, travel through Birkhill heading south to Manuel for this weekends run.
http://www.srps.org.uk/railtours/programme.htm
The Sunday squad focused on the old clay mine picnic area as the area has been requiring some tender loving care for a while. Table and fence painting has commenced along with the usual weeding and grass cutting.
Work also continued on the platform embankments, as yesterday, the focus was around the bridge but today on the north side where in the spring a good showing of blue bells were competing with the overgrowth.
The station exterior was looking a bit dirty and had become a ‘parlor’ for our resident spiders who had put there cobwebs in virtually every crack they could find, although a good picture for Halloween it was making the exterior look drab. So the first part of the Saturday morning was spent washing down the wood work to help restore it back to a respectable lived in station. We then moved on to giving the picket fence a scrub for good measure. After the first train had passed we then focused on our favorite past time of weeding of the embankments with special focus around the bridge
The weather this year has been great for growing, unfortunately that includes weeds & brambles, so much of the day was focused on tidying up the garden area along the platform. The civils team have continued with the development of the second platform and have now fitted the ‘Hangers’ ready for the next phase of the build. The development of the station’s visitors centre / museum has also moved forward with the installation of several Interpretation boards which provide details of the Clay Mine including the formation of clay, history of the mine and how the railway supported the mine when it was in operation.
Its nearly that DOWT time again… Weather wasn’t great but the group cracked on with the grass and weed clearing in preparation for the Thomas show.
Meanwhile during the week the Civils team had been out marking up the next phase of Platform 2 build.
Weeding and clearing was the order of the weekend again, Saturday team continued weeding and clearing around the station area the Sunday squad commenced the clearing of the ramp area down to the new platform which rapidly got overgrown again.
This last week saw the civils team make great strides at Birkhill seeing at least 100m of foundations being poured
Not to be out done by the Civils team the Signals team have installed the points to the top of all the new Birkhill Signals
The Civils team where out again this week, preparing the foundations for the first 10 metres of concrete pore, rebar cut to size & support boards secured. Good progress on foundation digging and leveling continued towards the south end too.
