The search for rock continues!

As a Museum dealing with the iron stone quarrying industry, Rocks by Rail has remarkably little rock which when you are filling Gabion baskets/cages is somewhat frustrating! The Gabions form the supporting structure for a new viewing platform that will bring visitors closer to the action in the quarry on operating days. However, if you know where to look, there are pockets of suitable material available and I have previously posted about the ten tons of hardened cement bags that are spread around the site. The trouble is that most of what is left is covered by things - usually those things are particularly heavy in nature!

However, we also have a CAT! A big CAT!

Moving some of the stuff onto pallets made the process a lot easier for the CAT .

There was a slight problem in as much as these very heavy steel plates were straddled over two pallets and we decided that the likelihood of moving those without a major calamity was next to zero so we left them in place. 

Although far from idea, there was sufficient clearance to get under the pallets and mine the loose cement bags which is something that the others decided I should do for some reason!

With mining work having managed to get a bout a ton of material it was time to get a Gabion filled! However we did have to construct one first but that was soon in place.

Then the rather laborious task of getting the rocks from the other end f the line and pushing them up to site using the platelayers trolley started followed by actually getting them into the Gabion.

By the end of the day the Gabion is about half full, which is good going and David and Alex are obviously pleased and no doubt ready for a rest - just like me! We still need to find some more rock though but that is something for next week.