Sunday 22nd May: Crane Enters Service

Lifting a track panel with the new crane.
Photo: Terry Mann

The restoration of the MNR's 10-ton rail-mounted crane has now been completed with the purchase of the first set of lifting chains. This has enabled us to arrange operator training, and over the weekend beginning 21st May, three MNR members (Barry Brackpool, Matt Goodrum and Terry Mann) received two days of tuition and testing. All three passed and will soon receive their official crane certificates. Congratulations to them.

Permanent Way Reports

By Owen Stratford and Trevor Brackpool.

Saturday 7th and Sunday 8th May: Shovelling ballast

We intend to put a buffer stop on the end of the headshunt at Wymondham, and this requires a significant amount of ballast to be dug out. We also spread a lot of the new ballast that was dropped in that area in recent weeks.

Saturday 14th May: Greasing Fishplates and Installing Ground Frame

With a small group of five, we attended to two of the outstanding tasks at Wymondham. We dug the hole for the ground frame base, inserted the sleepers and installed the frame on top of these. The point and lock rodding connections were established, with only lengths of point channel requiring fitting in order to complete it. Meanwhile the other half of the group worked through the fishplates, removing, cleaning and greasing them.

The new ground frame and rodding runs.
Photo: Owen Stratford

Sunday 15th May: Installing Ground Frame

We continued with the ground frame at the north end of the loop. We had encountered a clash between two parts of the rodding and the circuit controllers on the frame. To rectify this, a set was installed on the point drive connection to the lever. This is a connector that alters the height at which the rodding reaches the lever. As this changed the relative height of the components, we had to jack up the frame and repack the sleepers to a new level in order to make things line up. The final lengths of point rodding were cut to size and inserted. We then adjusted the travel on the cranks to make everything work correctly. Finally the sleepers were backfilled and tamped to make the frame solid.

Other work on site involved continuing with boxing off the sleepers and tweaking the alignment on the head-shunt. We also repositioned the stop board to its new position for trains coming off of the mainline.

Saturday 21st and Sunday 22nd May: Odd Jobs

This weekend's work consisted of a few outstanding jobs to get the run-round finished. We drilled holes in the check rails at the south end of the loop to enable them to take check rail blocks and spread out the spoil heaps to enable us to strim the weeds when they grow.

Saturday 28th May: Signalling Preparations

The S&T section of the PW dept spent today sorting out the remaining components (apart from the ground frame) that are needed to complete the south end signalling of the run round loop at Wymondham. We loaded these onto the wagon at Dereham ready to be delivered. We then freed off some components that were seized.

Meanwhile, the remainder of the team went off to carry out odd jobs. Some branches that were obstructing visibility at Danemoor Bridge were removed to aid sighting for road traffic around the curve. They then moved on to Wicklewood and painted over some graffiti before heading to Wymondham to collect some tools.

Sunday 29th May: Re-conditioning Buffer Stop

We spent today in Dereham Yard, reconditioning the buffer stop for Wymondham. This had been loaded onto the Tench. We removed each of the chairs and replaced the rotten sleepers on it with serviceable ones, before cleaning off the build-up of rust and reattaching everything.

Drainage Report

By Roy Malyon.

Tuesday 3rd May: Clearing Drains

Four members spent a very useful day just north of the River Tiffey footpath crossing, rodding and clearing the drainage system. The drains at this point carry vast amounts of water and if a blockage occurs, water backs up along the track for nearly half a mile towards the Chapel Lane Bridge.

Two restrictions, caused by roots with silt behind, were cleared and at one point the water level in a catch-pit fell by virtually two feet, showing the value of our maintenance work. A simple marking device - a white cable tie on an adjacent rail-chair - denotes where a drainage pit or outfall is located, and it was surprising how a few rabbits can mask where the pits are located. It is very important that drainage works are planned and maintenance is regular so that members are not just reacting to problems.