27 August - Staplehurst job - finished track lifting of siding Recovered lots of chairs and pandrols/screws plus small quantity of bull head rail. Oversight made - took impact wrench to unscrew chairs, but did not have correct socket - oops! It turned out that half the chairs had cracked (possibly through metal fatigue caused by wooden block expansion and contraction over the years) and a lot of sleepers were completely rotten, so the chairs ripped out of them, a lucky break! Job done. Thanks again to Andy at Network Rail.

21 August - Double track progresses - crane can now traverse over new point into yard. Shortly be tackling lifting of three way point section and sorting out yard roads.

3 August - Continuing trackwork.

31 July - Back at Staplehurst to pick up track material donated by Network Rail - predominately an old siding of 100 metres (ish), a buffer stop and various clips and bits...some knuclehead had dumped a mountain of ballast on top of a 60ft section, so we could not take that as we could only have half the ballast, which was not financially workable.

Slight oversight was made - the HIAB lorry bed was not long enough to take the 30ft track sections, or the 42 foot point work, so going to have to do another day with an artic...however, the buffer stop, some concrete sleepers and track fittings were transported to Robertsbridge. Thanks to handy Andy from Network Rail!

27 July - Work continues on runround pointwork - lots to do...

20 July - Pointwork continues in yard. Bucket loader back in service.

15 July - Work has started on run round and revised track layout necessitated for passenger rides (HMRI). Steam charter photos (13 July). Pictures of ditch dredging work and clearance work.

Dredged ditch at bottom of embankment - the area is now finally drying out. Steam loco (just!) visible coming through Robertsbridge. I was a bit quick on the trigger and my digital camera has a long lag between shots...