After the organisational excitement of last week, a couple of us spent a quiet day pursuing some of the smaller sub-projects on the list.
This included cutting back the brambles and gorse around a couple of nearby location cabinets. These aren't currently used, but will be have to be linked together to provide mains power to the box. This is, of course, easier when you can get the doors open.
We also carried-on digging out the concrete drainage channel at the foot of the rear wall, which sinks increasingly far below the present ground level at one end, and rises into a very narrow space at the other. A few yards further south, brambles and nettles have completely obscured the route of the drainage ditch that ran into a nearby culvert. Progress on this is hard to photograph, but you can begin to make out where the channel is meant to be.
Meanwhile at Ruddington, work began on getting the north door back into shape. Considering the state of the hinges, we suspect it has been forcibly pulled off the frame and thrown to the ground below. As illustrated, it is now much closer to being rectangular.
Back at HH, our day's work was punctuated by two visitors, both coincidentally bringing up the topic of signage. The present nameboard is only temporary, and we've been thinking about getting a more historically-appropriate replacement made. The puzzle was that in photos from the 1970s, the nameboard on the north end of the building looks very poorly fitted. Speaking to the present owner of that sign, we now know conclusively that there were two different boards, of different sizes. The southern one was larger, and moved to the north end for reasons unknown. What happened to the smaller (~50" wide) board remains a mystery.
On a shorter timescale, our second visitor produced a new banner, which we intend to display on the front of the signalbox, once it is suitably mounted. The building is not in a prominent position, so we have to make the most of the brief glimpse passengers get from passing trains. After all, not everyone reads these posts!
