Since November 2012 when we received the first skip at our Paddington Tunnels site, people have been amazed to hear just how our team of volunteers worked to remove the estimated 1000+ tons of rubble and materials that had been dumped in the catacombs of Paddington since 1840, when Williamson died.

Since it has not been possible to use earth moving equipment to make the removal of the infill easier, our volunteer diggers have worked tirelessly with just shovels, filling a never ending line of buckets. At first, getting these buckets to the surface, was by forming a chain of volunteers, passing each bucket up the chain to the skip.

However, as the depth of Paddington became deeper and deeper, so it got harder to bring the buckets up to the surface and into the skip. So on each Level we have installed a gin wheel pulley, meaning we can now lift from the lowest depths of Level 4 up to Level 3, then to 2 and finally from Level 1 to the surface.

Watch this short video, to see the Journey of one of our many Buckets from deep on Level 4 up to the skip…