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Latest News: Archive
August 2002
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Latest News: Archive
August 2002
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On Sunday 4th August, 13 children aged from 10 to 13 from the Chernobyl region will be visiting the MNR as part of their visit to Norfolk.
The children are staying with host families in and around Great Yarmouth.
The children, their interpreter and some the host families will be arriving at Dereham station at 10am to travel out on the 11.00 train for Wymondham, returning at 12.20. On their return, they will be having a snack lunch before moving on to Gressenhall museum for the afternoon.
During the week beginning 5th August, Balfour Beatty will be putting their tamper through its paces on the MNR. This work will greatly improve the ride quality for our passengers, as well as reducing wear and tear to our rolling stock and locomotives.
By Owen Stratford.
Fortunately, the weather was cooler today. We managed to assemble another five panels in the yard at Dereham. A JCB was on site and cleared some space by arranging some palleted concrete platform blocks more tidily. It also placed ballast adjacent to the new siding for when we come to level and pack it. Another concerted day's effort when the weather is cool should enable us to reach the buffer stops, and then the track will be lined.
The team went out to change sleepers near Yaxham, in preparation for the arrival of the tamper during the week.
After the visit during the week of a tamper, some work was undertaken to consolidate the work carried out by the machine. To that end some ballast was moved into bays that were depleted after packing the track. The Hilti hammers were also in action, manually packing some of the point timbers where the tamper could not reach due to the point's signalling connections.
A rather depleted p-way team spent the day doing some more work on the new siding.
A fantastic day was had on Saturday on the bank at Danemoor. We had a strong turnout of volunteers and managed to insert 1000 ferrules and thus completed the referruling program in that area. We also lifted the TSR, enabling the trains to run at line speed again.
With today's planned work finishing the day before, time was spent in Dereham Yard shovelling some ballast into some of the sleeper bays, moving sleepers and getting ready for installing some signal pulley stakes.
By Richard Cullen.
Richard spent a couple of hours working on the station's P-Way trolley, and has managed to fit a third flanged wheel to the frame. The fourth is proving difficult to replace as the remains of the old axle are refusing to be extracted to allow the new wheel to be inserted. Once repairs are complete, this trolley will be of considerable use around the site.
A sign advertising the station as being part of the MNR was kindly provided by Terry Waller, and this has been put up at the entrance to the drive. This should help people realise that the station is part of the greater plan, and not a separate preservation scheme. It also lets people know whether or not the buffet is open or closed before they arrive.
Paul spent the morning rubbing down and undercoating one section of Great Eastern Railway coach body number 1380, before rain stopped play. David and Richard spent some time examining the recently delivered wagon, and believe that it may have been built by the London Midland and Scottish Railway at Wolverton Works in 1944, to diagram D2108. This design was later adopted by British Railways, as diagram 1/200, and it appears that our wagon may be from this batch. Unless the correct identity can be established through records, a suitable number will be chosen from the M525140-M526489 series when the vehicle is restored.
The first batch of apples have also been harvested from the station orchard, these being "Early Victoria" cooking apples. The other varieties are late ripening varieties and will be picked later in the year.
By Owen Stratford.
Barry and Owen spent the day in the signal box fitting more components onto the signal frame. The electrical locking frame was also trial fitted. We then cleaned parts of it.
With the Nenta Train to Bristol attracting many of our regular PW members, there were insufficient people to carry out further work on the siding. Having anticipated this, Barry, Owen, Roland and James changed hats for the day in order to do some S&T. 14 signal pulley stakes were planted in the ground, carrying the signal wire run from Dereham Central Up Starter a little nearer (117 yards) to the box. It seems a simple job, but the quality of installation will affect how well the run performs in the long term. New components such as pulley wheels were also fitted at the same time.
By Roy Malyon, Ernie Woolley and Terry Mann.
A gang of 5 people went out to clear vegetation near Wymondham Abbey Station. After a hot, hard day's work, we have cleared right around the corner north of Crossing 3, greatly improving passengers' views of the adjacent water meadows.
The D&F gang were doing more vegetation clearance near the watermeadows in Wymondham, and there's now an enormous amount of cut wood that needs disposing of. In the same area there is a blocked drain, and after doing some rodding, the cause was found to be a large number of tree roots invading the pipe. Some of these have now been cleared out, but there's still plenty of work to do to get the drain flowing properly again.
Frank and Roy have been helping out with the drainage of an adjacent field to the railway near Yaxham. In return for the standing wood on the east side of the embankment, the neighbouring farmer, Nick Anema, will be digging out the ditch and re-fencing the whole area. We co-operated over fencing, drainage and bank clearance on the western side last year, with highly satisfactory results for all concerned.
The drainage of the embankment base is much improved and the field is beginning to dry out. Now that the drainage work is complete, the re-fencing will be done shortly.
Drainage work in the cutting immediately north of Wymondham Abbey Platform has been taking place for a number of weeks. The problem of sleepers 'pumping' water after heavy rains in the centre of the cutting was caused by four reasons:
Volunteers completed solving these challenges today and the work involved new pipe work for 58 yards. This was one of the most exhausting digs that we have had and was made even more difficult due to the depth of the trench necessary to reach the outfall into the stream. Catch-pits will be built in this section later in the year.
Roland Terry, Terry Mann and Roy Malyon continue to strim vegetation now that the main growing season is over. Our first aim is to strim from Rash's Green footpath crossing, through Dereham to Swanton Road Level Crossing.