Monday 7th and Tuesday 8th April

Monday was a dismal day with heavy rain, and the gang were not particularly looking forward to the day's work, which included erecting the signage for the forthcoming Thomas the Tank Engine week (clearly a Pway responsibility- Ed). This however was interrupted by notice that the farmer down at Bishop's Sutton, whilst calling the Railway to thank them for repairing the fence at Farm Road bridge, also reported that some further fencing on the downside of the line just outside Sutton cutting needed some attention.

A team was duly dispatched to the location, where quite a few strands of wire were found to be missing and replaced. The process was made more difficult by service trains running, which meant that the usual form of transport, the Wickham Trolley, could not be used to ferry materials and men. With the task completed, the gang headed to Ropley where they started to erect the signs, before unanimously deciding that they had had enough of getting wet and went home.

Tuesday dawned with far better weather conditions. The gang finished erecting the Thomas signs, and re-ballasted and rolled the roadway in the car park field to the west of the Station, before heading up to M&FM to attend to a broken crossing nose bolt in the pointwork to the London end of the Station. 

What should have been a straightforward task, turned out to be the complete opposite. Extracting the broken bolt was the easy bit, however trying to slide the new bolt through the crossing nose when the holes had moved out of alignment took quite a while to sort out! The first rail to one side had to be unkeyed, and pulled up to align the holes. Once this was done and the bolt slid in and tightened up,it was discovered that the rail expansion gap at the other end of the rail was too big, and this meant that the next 6 lengths of rail also had to be unkeyed and pulled up to equalise the expansion gaps. The job was made even more difficult again by the presence of service trains, and it was finally completed at around 4pm, much to everyone's relief.

A small contingent also attended to some branches overhanging a garden in Winston Rise on the southern side of the line, where the owner was concerned that they may fall down and damage her shed.