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Latest News: Archive
August 2006
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Latest News: Archive
August 2006
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Norfolk International Youth Project volunteers at County School. 28th August 2006. Photo: Matt Goodrum |
The Norfolk International Youth Project is an organisation created to cater for European 18-24 year olds on exchange programmes, and give them a taste of life in the UK. They were having difficulty finding some kind of day volunteering programme and naturally we always need more volunteers so we were happy to have them at the railway. After some discussions with the project leader we decided to base the operations at County School where there are facilities available and various tasks are possible. We were offered the services of 40 young people but to make this more manageable they were split in to three groups over the three days with each group then split in to half for some to assist Eileen at the station repainting the white stripe on the platform edge and preparing the fence and the remainder helping Gary, Neil, and Matt for vegetation works. The first day was spent south of the station burning previous cuttings which everybody seemed to enjoy, while days 2 and 3 were spent to the north repairing the footpath fence and tidying up the area, again burning all we could.
This proved a useful experience with the teams enjoying their day in the countryside. The following Saturday they all returned for a ride to Wymondham as a thankyou for the work they had done. Hopefully next year we will be able to repeat the programme on more than one occasion.
By Owen Stratford, Trevor Brackpool and Matt Goodrum.
We set off early today in order to deliver sleepers to Whinburgh Cutting. 80 sleepers had been loaded on the previous Sunday onto the flatrol. These were duly taken out and then unloaded through the length of the cutting. We had quite a tight window in order to get the sleepers out and unloaded and the train back before the first passenger service. This was accomplished before we then managed to change 26 at the north end of the cutting. The process is always more prolonged when we have to worry about trains as we can only remove one sleeper at a time as opposed to the batch removal when we are in a closed part of the line.
We went up to Swanton Road today. The crossing has become worn and so we put in some temporary tarmac patches as an interim measure pending a more permanent fix. After completing this we then returned to Dereham to identify further point components that will be needed in the future.
The northern section team continued with the task of back filling ballast around the recently replaced sleepers north of Dereham. To think some people pay gym membership rates to put in a similar amount of effort when all they have to do is come and join us on a Sunday and burn off a few calories in the glorious Norfolk countryside! After that we finished early and went for a ride on the train (with the excuse that we were inspecting work down south!)
A small team were back out at Whinburgh. Despite the small group, we still managed to change 28 sleepers working from where we left off at the Yaxham end of the cutting, reaching just under the B1135 road bridge.
A few people who were available midweek decamped for an excursion to Halesworth. We have been donated the former signal box and as part of the preparation for its move, the frame has to be removed. A good start was made, removing the levers and some ancillaries.
We were back at Whinburgh Cutting for one final day today. The crew tackled the remaining 26 sleepers, which included 5 which had to be dug out. We started up at Tollers Lane and worked back through the cutting. We completed in good time for catching the last train back to Dereham and even got some time to back-fill a few sleepers.
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20th August 2006. Photo: Owen Stratford |
We returned to Halesworth today to continue dismantling the signal frame and prepare the box for transport. Several people spent the morning freeing off structural brackets and removing boarding from the internal walls. Meanwhile the remainder set to work on the frame. We have not tackled a Saxby & Farmer Frame before and so we learnt 'on the job'. We started off by removing the lever bases from the main beam. These are castings that take the levers and sit on individual spindles. These are held down by a small casting that is in one of the most awkward places possible to reach and took a lot of effort to remove them (they aren't light either). Once these were removed, we had a little more space to move. The quadrants were removed and we then stripped and removed the locking trays. The frame is of quite an old design and you can see how they evolved to remove awkward features. We tacked one of these next. At the operating floor level is a two piece floor plate which goes the full length of the frame. It is supported on the end frames and then by ten threaded up-stands from the base casting. These had to be unscrewed from the floor plate before we manhandled them clear of the operating hole. By this time it was getting late and we called it a day.
We removed excess ballast covering the sleepers that was left on them from when we had a ballast regulator in. One more day and all the areas affected will be finished.
By Roy Malyon.
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14th August 2006. Photo: Terry Mann |
Vic Ward has recently taken over responsibility for managing the design and construction of the ash / maintenance pit and has assembled a small team of volunteers (the Water Tower crew plus one other) to help him with the task. A new design has been finalised, based on a pre-cast concrete construction, and the site cleared in the last few weeks, ready for action. The steelwork was ordered a week ago and delivered to site in three pre-assembled sections on Friday 11th August, just as excavation of the hole was being completed. On Monday 14th August, after installing and levelling the base support blocks in 'the mud', the team used 'Jayne', the MNR rail crane to position the three sections of steelwork into the hole and made the final assembly connections with multiple sections of additional steel reinforcing bar.
By Gary Hall.
We headed down to Bridge 1706 to continue the clearance of the east side of the cutting. The conditions were ideal for burning, so we had a good roaring fire to start to clear some of the backlog of cuttings that had previously been stacked up in this area. We also continued some clearance work. A few trees still need to be removed to complete the east side of the cutting from bridge 1706 to 1707. Our September meeting should see this portion complete, but it will take some time to clear up the back log of cuttings to be burned off.