Both membership numbers, and the size of volunteer teams, are rising quite fast now. On the SteamWorks site in Southwold, the new building (a bit over one third of the whole visitor centre) is well on the way to completion, with only the roof cladding to be done. Power (3-phase, at last!) should be on next week, and we are planning the first section of the new workshop, with the floor to be concreted, services laid on, and workbenches and shelving to be organised.
With the rail from Peggs of Aldeburgh (which may possibly be original SR, but we can’t prove that – it is certainly the right specification), we have almost completed the infill for “the gap”, giving us four permanent track panels (all of which will be inside the shed) and four temporary ones (for unloading rolling stock away from the overhead wires).
The four temporary panels will end up forming the southern road in the shed, thus allowing that floor to be concreted as well. On that topic – if anyone out there knows of a reasonably heavy-duty electric (110 volt, ideally) concrete mixer at a decent price, we need one (as the job divides up into smallish pieces, it’d be easier to do the creting ourselves, rather than using readymix).
We had a bit of a time with the last two panels, as the rails were not all exactly the same length (and you can’t cut an inch off, as the fishplate holes are then wrong) – but some judicious thumping with ever larger sledge hammers and a couple of crowbars sorted that. The eagle-eyed among you will see that we now have a mix of 35lb and 30lb rails – but with the hard substrate, doubled-up sleepers, SG track screws, and some joggled fishplates, that’ll be fine – and the entire 40 yards of interior track will eventually be encased in concrete anyway, which will support it even further.
This week (starting on Thursday 25th May) we have our Pop-Up Shop at IChameleon in the Halesworth Thoroughfare (9 till 5 each day, less hours on Sunday): we have again invited local groups and charities to join us, and we hope that our supporters, while shopping in Halesworth’s fine pedestrianised town centre, will come for a chat with the Chairman (to give you an idea of him – he visited Waldringfield Open Gardens on Sunday 21st, and was heard to say that, nice as it all was, he felt sorry for a village which had never had, and probably never would have, a railway, and that he believed that the gardens would have been greatly improved by such a
facility)
There are many unusual shops in Halesworth – and there’s lots of
choice of coffee shops as well. We would like to thank Halesworth
Library and Halesworth Lions for their help.
And don’t forget that our shop in Southwold is open Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, 10 till 4, as well.
