Site meeting at Hayles

A site meeting was held today by Jim, the project leader, to introduce those who have put their names forward to come and help. Another will be held on Friday, for those that can't do Monday. The working days will be the two non running days, Monday and Friday, always in liaison with the ops manager.

Today was one of the non-running days. Here Jim is explaining the structure of the platform wall, which will be made of the concrete blocks you can see, faced trackside by wooden beams which will give it the look of being constructed in wood. There will be the usual corbelling of imperial blues, and then some of the remaining platform slabs ex CRC2. A supply of rebar was also delivered. We have access to a generator, and an SDS drill.

A mixer and barrows are now on site, a friendly gesture of the Broadway gang. We could do with some shovels still, and some plastic chairs or a scaffolding board to make a bench - we have to have our tea somewhere!

As this was a site meeting, we stayed topside. We did have the chance to position the water tank, and this will be filled periodically from a friendly neighbour nearby. The reopening of the halt certainly seems to have neighbour report.

It looks now as if the first working day will be Monday or Friday next week, depending on what is most popular after the second site meeting.

Another site visitor was this Hercules. We appear to be in a designated low flying area, which explains the regular Hercules and Chinook low flying traffic over your blogger's house in the valley. This one flew round Dumbleton Hill several times. It's always very impressive when they suddenly appear overhead. There was also a report of 3 B52s in the area - one was seen over Pershore - but none ventured over Hayles today. Now, that would have been quite something.

Near to Hayles Abbey halt is a fruit farm, and the owner is one of our supporters. He explained that he used Hayles Abbey halt when it was open (prior to March 1960) in his schooldays. There was an early morning train with a couple of carriages and about 30 regulars on board. He would cycle down to the halt, padlock his bike to the railings and take the train down to Cheltenham Malvern road, together with other schoolchildren along the line. (we have heard similar stories from older residents of Broadway). The train would then continue to St. James.

The fruit farm felt that a re-opened halt would benefit their customers, many of which camp in the grounds, so they were quite for it.

More news will be posted when work starts.