14/01/2026 - Templeton South Pot

 14/01/2026 - Evening- Alex Randall, Sam Hill, Oli Hill, Trevor Hughes - 3hr

1 large skip to surface.

First 'normal' session since declaring the railway operational, and a great success. 

To start, the surface skip was lowered to the 166', and loaded. This allowed for some house keeping and general tidying of electric cables in the tunnel to South Pot. The removal of past electric cables will continue.

Then the hauling system was put into action, almost all the spoil remaining at the bottom was sent up to the 166' for stacking, as well as all the spoil that was moved up to Echo during railway testing. The only spoil that was left in Echo are rocks suitable for wall building for a future project.

Once the bottom was empty AR drilled and charged the next round of holes for forward progress.

This was all achieved in just under 3hrs. Prior to the railway it would have probably taken all four of us a similar time just to move the spoil from the bottom up to Echo Pot, so hopefully we can soon make up the progress lost during the long months of rail engineering.

At the end the skip was raised and emptied into the dumper, which was already fairly full from the North Pot Team's activities. It's currently out of action, so we'll be stacking in the Tunnels for now.

Other things learnt, the buckets are not compatible with the railway's barrel skip, so these will be brought out for surface storage. The dig face currently has a deep puddle, in time we'll be able to make modifications to drain it, but the next couple rounds of drilling could be quite wet! 

It was also very good to have Trevor along for the first time with us, though he has been in the cave many years ago. Hopefully we'll see him again.

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