While I've been spending Saturdays at Hotchley Hill, the Ruddington contingent of S&T have fabricated, painted, and prepared foundations for a new signal post to go on platform 1.
Today, since it wasn't raining, all available hands stayed back to stand it up, and bolt it down. As illustrated, this is now done, although not quite as straightforwardly as we hoped. The steel studding cast into the concrete was carefully measured to be square to the fence, but when we lifted the post into place, it looked all wrong!
Why? Well, so far as we can tell, the paving slabs on the platform are slightly skewed. Perhaps the fence is, too. Either way, it took a few minutes of head-scratching and rota-broaching to widen the holes in the base of the post into slots, so that the post can sit at an angle that looks right. Around other axes, squaring-up was a lot easier. One person with a spirit-level on the post, and another with a spanner, raising and lowering the nuts until it was vertical.
Of course, the job isn't close to finished yet. The post needs an arm and a head, and that needs cables running to it. Those jobs can reasonably be done by a few people, so next week we should (fingers crossed) be back at Hotchley Hill. There's a door to trial-fit, and we're all keen to see what the exceptional rainfall has done to the ditch!
Has it exposed another bottle or two?