Western Depot – cont.
Western Depot – Continues apace
by: Steve P.
This week saw more frenzied activity at Western Depot as Bob A, John D and Steve P’s teams all worked together with support from the logging team as required. Steve P’s team started work on the trenches for the new phone and alarm cables with a 30m trench from the new office to the main gate and shorter trenches across the main gate and to the long container. The large diamond saw proved somewhat of a handful, but by Wednesday last week the digging was well underway.
Bob A’s team continued to work on the barn extension so that the boundary with the canal towpath can be made secure as part of the perimeter fence. The blockwork was raised 600m from the floor that had been cast the week before, and work could then start on the wooden cladding above this, with temporary scaffolding being used to provide safe access.
Some of the steel that had been discovered when this area was cleared was put to good use to build more parts of the frame for the updated barn with Chris and Mike fabricating a long 8.7m section to link the rear support posts together. This seemed like a good idea at the time, but proved more problematic when it came to moving the new beam into place – the solution was a conger line of volunteers snaking around the depot in a semi random route but this eventually resulted in the steel beam being secured in place!
Wednesday saw everyone involved in a significant clean up, with John D’s team using the tipper to move items large (including some very large wooden beams) and small (including Chris P’s “potential” stockpile of metal!) over to Prentice Field, and by lunch time the depot had never looked either tidier or larger!
This of course provided the opportunity to dig more trenches and holes, with Bob A and John D working on the junction box for all the different cable runs, and Bob H digging (and eventually refilling!) more holes.
The rest of Bob A’s team continued work on the barn rear cladding, and by the end of the day about half of this had been completed, but this had used up all the spare boards which forced an end to the work until more boards can be sourced.
Late Wednesday saw some measure of a clean up with trenches refilled and roughly levelled, and Bob A completing his work on the distribution box and signing it for posterity!
