By twenty past one in the afternoon, all four rails were fitted and I was starting to hammer in the chair keys. This didn't take too long, but once all the rails were secure, the short rail nearest the crossing gate, was sitting a bit low. Off to the workshop again, to cut some wooden packers to go under the sleepers. I levelled the ground as best as I could, but there were still some undulations. The sleepers and now with rail too, were very heavy, so to lift them to get the packers under the sleeper, I made another trip up the garden for my trolley jack. I seemed to spent a lot of the day, walking up and down the garden for stuff! The jack allowed me to lift the rail and sleeper and try the packer in place. A couple of sleepers needed some packers and they all needed a little trimming to fit. With the rails all sitting flush, I stopped to clear up the tools and take some pictures.
 

With the paint on the gate mount fully dry, it was time to get it fitted. The concrete footing was drilled and four rawle bolts hold the mount down. Since the post was quite a tight fit, I covered the bottom of the post and inside the mount with Vaseline, so it would slide in without damaging the paint on either. The post was then held into the mount with twelve large screws. Once that was fixed in place, the gate was lifted to its correct position and the bolt hole drilled and painted. It was left to dry a while before the gate was closed and the bolt slotted into the hole. The mount bolts and post screws were then painted over in black Hammerite. I finished the work with an arty photo, between two bushes.
 

On the morning of the 11th, I had a trip out to B&Q for some timber. I wanted to form an edge to the trackbed to contain the ballast and keep the soil embankment in place. The easiest way seemed to be a 4 inch tall timber wall, with stakes to hold it in place. The  wall is made from three strips and the centre one needed cutting to length. All three strips were painted along the bottom edges in bitumen and left to dry for a short time. Once dry enough to handle, I started fixing them in place. At the hedge end, the timber was attached to the sleeper wall next to the future hedge-side path.
 

On the 12th, I got the weed membrane glued and stapled to the front sleeper wall and wrapped over the edge strip that I fitted yesterday. There was also an additional patch of weed membrane to glue down at the back, where the original 5mtr square sheet wasn't long enough. Then came the question of ballast. After taking some measurements, I sat down yesterday with an online gravel calculator. Even allowing for the space taken by the sleepers, it suggested six 850Kg bulk bags to fill the area. Decorative gravel starts at £100 per bulk bag, so spending £600 on rock was more than I was prepared to spend. I then contemplated filling most of the area with river gravel, then just adding a final layer of decorative gravel on top. The river gravel was only £50 per pulk bag and much more affordable.

I had around a quarter of a bag of river gravel, left over from the soakaway behind the sleeper wall. I decided to spread this out and get a feel for how far and how deep it would cover. This suggested the six bulk bag estimate was probably pretty close. So this morning, I went to the supplier and ordered five bulk bags of the river gravel. That won't be delivered until next Wednesday. Once the five bags have been spread out over the track bed, I can decide whether one decorative bulk bag is enough, or whether to add one more river gravel layer before the decorative stone. With that order, I'll probably add two bulk bags of top soil for the new lawn.

So for now, the track area is paused. I still need to move some of the existing earth around on the lawn area, to level it off more, so I'll probably focus on that for the next week.