We left the student input into the tunnel project in June when schools broke up for summer. Andrew is never one to let the grass grow under his feet and so he & Sandy have been working hard to move the project on during the students summer recess. Luckily, Andrew would occasionally stop long enough Read more about Tunnel Portals…..[…]
The recent fine weather has been a bonus at Almondell as the ground conditions have been dry & firm allowing good progress in the North West corner. Excavations for the Comrie circuit has progressed such that several lorry loads of blaes has been consolidated to form the trackbed & embankments. Progress on the Almondell circuit Read more about Progress Report……[…]
ESME are delighted to announce that we have been awarded £14,855 in funding from the Levenseat Trust to fund ‘A Wheelchair Railway‘ project. The fund will be used to cover the purchase of a special wheelchair carrying carriage supplied by Cromar White , a brake tender riding car and a battery powered Class 37 locomotive Read more about A Wheelchair Railway….[…]
Recently attention turned from heavy civil engineering tasks associated with building the railway to lighter duties associated with tidying the site up. Our Roving Reporter has been back on site & has sent these pictures to the Newsdesk: John F. was busy planting out the recently rotovated garden area. Roddy was busy installing fence posts Read more about General Duties……[…]
It’s been a long haul, but with the easing of Co-Vid restrictions members have been drifting back to Almondell…. George P. is seen with ‘Capercaille’ fresh from attention to the valves & pistons. ‘Capercaille’ now has a crisp beat once again. Jerry introduced his grandson to the hobby with his first ever run Read more about We Are Back![…]
Our Chair, Mark C. finally managed to get a communication out of Almondell where he has been resident since mid November: ‘The -7 deg C that we had last Saturday froze the pipes in the caravan and we are still trying to get a phone line connected so the internet is a bit ‘patchy’. Read more about Living On Site…..[…]
Over the past few weeks with the easing of lockdown restrictions (although these could change in the light of current developments) some construction activity has returned to Almondell. Care has been taken to ensure Social Distancing, but a combination of an 11 acre site and staggering of working party days this has not been too Read more about The Loneliness Of The CoVid Worker…..[…]
ESME has shown itself very capable of recycling all sorts of materials. Andrew has excelled at this, as over the last few months he has been working mainly in solitary repurposing 300 million year old Sandstone to form the portals to the Wallace Bridge. Andrew recounts the story behind the headline: ‘Let’s start with a Read more about Recycling Old Sandstone……..[…]
The news on the BBC the Friday morning, 28th August was full of the flooding at Broxburn yesterday afternoon. Broxburn is two minutes from our Almondell site. James was still on site & sent the newsdesk this report……. ‘I was washing the digger and tractor (!!) with Andy when it became really heavy around 5 Read more about Rain Drops Kept Falling On My Head……[…]
Andrew N. dropped an email to the Newsdesk informing us why the car park at Almondell suddenly had pallets of used mono-blocks….. ‘The origin of this story was that James said the committee had decided to lay a second platform with mono blocks to match the other one. We won’t mention the false start with Read more about A Chip Off The Old Blocks……?[…]
