On Friday 14th July, we had a group from Maersk Supply Service come along to do a volunteer community day with us.
Everyone was on site for 09:15 for coffee and biscuits, then we all jumped on the coach to head down to Haughton station.
There were a number of activities that we had planned, but the weather interfered with some of them.
Our plan for the day was to relay the reception line at Haughton station and do some painting and clearing.
The group were split and everyone was shown what to do and then got on with the tasks.
By lunchtime the sleepers that we had taken down were in and pinned. The planned painting had to be abandoned due to the light rain, but we still had the second rail installed on the back of the platform.
We went back to the Alford station for lunch which was brought in from The Bistro Restaurant in Alford.
After lunch we went back to haughton with another load of sleepers and pins.
The team worked away diligently throughout the day we had ballast from Donside Building Supplies Limited with a small dumper truck from KNC Groundworks Ltd and a digger from Haughton Holiday Park.
At the end of the day, we had laid 39 sleepers and moved lots of ballast, cleared the area of old trees cuttings and made the station ready for painting.
With a great amount accomplished through the day, everyone got back on the coach and headed back to Doreen and Carol in the station for tea and cakes.
We had 6 people from AVCR and 18 from Maersk, achieving 208 hours of community volunteer work completed in one day.
AVCR thanks Maersk Supply Service for coming out to help and would welcome any other group or company to see if they could lay any more sleepers in a day.
