Another successful day at Didcot Railway Centre today.

The blinding concrete has started to be laid around the foundation trenches of the building.

Coal for the loco department at DRC is delivered to the site by rail (not from the colliery, unfortunately, only from Didcot West Yard, where it arrives by road. There being no road access to the Railway Centre, all the supplies and large deliveries to the site make the last part of their journeys by rail, through Didcot station and into the steam centre.

The coal trucks are then shunted up the ramp to the coal stage, where the coal is then hand-shovelled into little barrow trucks to be tipped into locomotive tenders. Normally the coal lives in the trucks until it is used. However…. Didcot Railway Centre only has a small number of main line registered wagons that can be used for the movement of goods to and from the West Yard… such as building materials! So, in order to make use of the coal wagons, we needed to empty them of coal and pile it all in the coal stage ready for use from there.

A group of very hard-working volunteers set about this, and completely emptied about one and two-thirds wagons full of coal. That’s a lot of coal!

Elsewhere on the site another sub group continued the work of removing chairs from sleepers that was started last time. The sleepers will be used for shuttering around the concrete foundations.

A number of us will not be at the next Swindon Panel Saturday (8th November) as that is the day of our York NRM visit. However, if you’re not joining us in York, you are very welcome to join the civil engineering group at DRC for continued work towards the construction of the building.

More info on Swindon Panel Days at Didcot Railway Centre.