Saturday 3rd February

The cancellation of a scheduled photo charter meant that we were able to take out an additional day of line occupation of the Alton section and enter the Ropley section with permission from the associated PICO (Person In Charge Occupation).

A reasonable gang of 8 misguided souls gathered at HQ on what was a cold and wet day in readiness for the day's activities, a mixture of chair replacement and re-padding work down the line at Grosvenor bank, fitting a chimney cowl to The Grosvenor hut, brick reclaim at The Butts, and preparation work on a replacement door for Northside View hut.

Eddie, Keith H, Pete, Tony and Adam used Wickham Trolley 1 to transport them down to the bank to tackle the chair task, and Brian Hi, Adrian C and Corina took Wickham 2 down to The Grosvenor hut to fit the chimney cowl. 

The latter then travelled up to Alton, armed with club hammers and bolsters, dropping Corina off enroute at M&FM to apply the first coat of Creocote preservative to the hut door.

Before attacking the bricks, the Alton team did a spot of litter picking from The Butts to Alton Station, at which point the smell of bacon from the Station Cafe lured them in for breakfast. Not surprisingly, they were joined by Corina, Neil and Paul who had arrived by train, and the Ropley team, who had already changed a few chairs/pads.

Re-fueled, the teams headed back to continue with their tasks, with Paul joining Adrian and Brian brick bashing, and Neil going back to M&FM with Corina, where he took measurements of the concrete coal bunker at the Station. This was to facilitate the production of Newbury Concrete Works' next commission, a replica bunker for Ropley Station.

At around 3pm, both Wickhams returned to M&FM. The Ropley team had attended to  circa 30 chairs/pads, and the Alton team had recovered around another 100 bricks.

Next weekend sees the return of the service trains for the Railways' Pre-Spring Gala, and heralding the start of the running season.