A floating shunter!

More progress with the scenic sub-bases and this time I am creating the retaining walls to go around the cut out in the landscape where the signal box will be. All I need is card cut to size and then cover it with brick paper - just like this.....

Once the glue is all dry and the brick paper trimmed to size it will fit into the cut out something like this.....

I still need to give the vegetation a hair cut on this sub-base but I wanted to wait until the walls were fitted before doing that.

Despite Mrs. Woody's list of jobs I have had time for a few bike rides and I was passing the local canal where much activity was in progress.

Regular readers will know that I blogged earlier this year about the canal drying up to a trickle and the abundant growth of vegetation that took place.

Well, much of that growth has gone as the canal workers take advantage of restored water levels to dredge the area. fascinating to see the process with various vessels used along with excavators. All the dredged material is put into the open boat which I think technically is known as a butty. That is then towed to the right hand bank where the other excavator digs it out and places it in the large trench that has been dug - presumably to dry out before something else happens to it.

I was quite taken by the small boat which from a distance looks like a floating diesel railway shunter from the Rocks By rail Museum. In effect it is a shunter as it shunts the butty from one side of he canal to the other. A close up also revealed its fitting canal like name of Heron.

Wonder what it would look like on rails?