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Latest News: Archive
May 2006
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Latest News: Archive
May 2006
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We are delighted to welcome back NENTA Traintours for an excursion to York and Scarborough direct from the Mid-Norfolk Railway.
The excursion on Saturday 9th September 2006 will allow passengers six hours in York or four hours in Malton or Scarborough.
York is a perennial favourite for railtours with the famous Minster, the National Rail Museum, the Jorvik Viking Centre and lots more. Malton is the transfer point for the award-winning modern history museum, Eden Camp. Alternatively, Scarborough offers a traditional Victorian seaside experience with some of the finest parks and gardens in Britain, the elegant Esplanade and the magnificent Scarborough Spa Complex.
Fares are £46.75 for adults and £23.75 for children (£44.75 for adults and £22.75 for children for York only). A limited number of First Class seats are available for a supplement of £15. Premier Class including first class travel with breakfast, light lunch and dinner is available at £112.75 (adults) and £99.75 (children).
By Richard Cullen and Gary Hall.
Since our last report, work has continued apace on the GER coach body at County School. All the doors on the small compartment have now been refurbished, painted and fitted with serviced droplights. The interior of the compartment has been given its first topcoat of paint and the ends have had beading restored to them.
The surviving internal partition has been removed to allow it to be repaired. The seats and this partition were structural to the coach, and the removal of the seats and the fitting of a door into this partition had weakened the body considerably. The repair of the partition and replacement of the seating in the small compartment will go some way to undoing this.
We have been kindly donated an original Anderson bomb shelter, in excellent condition, by a local church. More details on this will follow once we have arranged collection.
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28th May 2006. Photo: Matt Goodrum |
Today's work party consisted of 4 people. Two of us started at 8 and on our way down the line came across a bushy tree by the farmer's access. After inspecting the tree for nests we decided to have it down. Two more people showed up and we soon had this job sorted. We now have a good view from the station platform towards bridge 1706 approximately 3/4 of a mile away. We managed to recover the tree trunk that was across the drainage ditch, and strim out several blocks of weeds. We even managed to locate the outflow for the drains in this area as well. This did not prove to be an easy task. Several trenches were dug in order to locate the pipe. The outflow was finally found about 2 feet below the ground surface. It is no wonder that these drains were not working properly: a really long time has elapsed since these drains were last cleared.
Work has continued over the bank holiday weekend, with the full height partition between the smoking and non-smoking ends of the GER coach being restored. This had previously had a large section missing where an interior door had been fitted during its time as a house. Attention will now turn to restoring the seating to the two bays in the smoking compartment.
A break in the continuous rain which seems to accompany this period of drought has allowed the picnic area to be cut and some work to be carried out on the Victory allotment.
Today the Station Group had a field trip to Mattishall to collect an Anderson bomb shelter. This shelter is in very good condition as it was previously used at a local church and, as it was in a churchyard, was never buried. Once new ends have been manufactured it will be placed in the Stationmaster's garden and used as part of our WW2 display.
By Roy Malyon, Owen Stratford, Trevor Brackpool and Matt Goodrum.
Four volunteers continued the clearance work north of Garvestone. Four huge bonfires were built and although there is still much burning of cut vegetation to complete, great progress was made.
We spent the day tidying up after the ballast regulator. There was excess ballast on the sleepers, and the shoulders and four-foot were rather short. These problems have now been fixed.
The poor whether dampened our enthusiasm but still members from the Bramley Line and CAST.IRON were shown how to grease fishplates to enable rails to expand and contract with variations in temperature. We managed only 1/4 mile after a late start and the rain. After this the team returned to Dereham, unlocking and opening the gates on the way to check their operation for next month's sleeper delivery train. It became obvious that Swanton Road north gate is well past its best and will soon require replacement.
We split into two teams for today. One group went into the Northern Section between Neatherd Road and Swanton Road to tidy up the area. We stacked up rubbish, old bricks and concrete for removal by a subsequent works train. Meanwhile, some of the levers in Dereham Central Signal Box received a layer of undercoat.
We went out to Hardingham today. Apart from wanting to watch the steam engine puffing up the bank, we also were regulating the ballast. A ballast regulator had visited the line a couple of years ago and left the ballast on top of the sleeper ends. This would eventually lead to premature rotting of the sleepers and so we dragged it back where required, topped up the shoulders where needed and then filled up a few low beds. A good sized gang allowed us to easily complete the work and have an early finish.
Trevor, Barry and Owen returned to the signal box in Dereham today. Since cleaning the next batch of ten levers back to bare metal two weeks ago, the levers had been primed and under coated during the week. Today we fixed the levers onto the bearing and top coated them. This has now resulted in enough levers being ready to start the basic installation of the signalling. There remains the catch handles and description plate brackets to add to these levers.
We also picked up a relay cabinet for the box today. This had been made redundant from a working signalbox and was kindly donated to the railway. A small crew went and dismantled it and brought it back to Dereham on a trailer. This is a glass fronted cabinet that holds shelf relays for the various pieces of signalling equipment.
We went off to Wicklewood today and attended to a few dipped joints. We also trimmed back a few close branches throughout the length.
We had a short visit to Dereham to load up the Flatrol wagon with 101 sleepers for changing in the northern section next week.
By Terry Mann.
Since our last report we have beavered away every week strengthening the chassis around the front of the vehicle where rust had taken its toll and can now report this work has been completed, with the front axle refitted and ready to accept the refurbished brakes and hubs.
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22nd May 2006. Photo: Terry Mann |
Vic has also been researching the paint colour combination and discovered "Blood and Custard" to be the correct combination for the period. He purchased the paint but we have had to wait until we'd finished all the grinding and welding and for the weather to improve before we could start the painting process. However, after spraying an undercoat and two top coats we now have the whole jib and "A" Frame in a glorious custard colour. [See attached picture. The exact line of join between the "Custard" and "Blood" seems to be open to much debate although we did find the original paintwork, which we stripped from the crane, had its 'join' around the seat height position. If any members have pictures of a similar crane which shows the paintwork combination in more detail we would appreciate them getting in touch with us.
Vic and Keith have also been doing a fine job in cleaning up the machinery section of the crane and we have opened up the hoist and jib gearboxes to clean out the "lubricant" which had found its way inside. A messy job but it had to be done and we are now ready to reassemble them and top up with clean gearbox oil.
The next job in the sequence will be refitting the hoist rope pulleys to the jib and then fitting the ropes themselves.