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Latest News: Archive
November 2009
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Latest News: Archive
November 2009
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By Matt Goodrum and Toby Rawlings.
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Flailing a thicket near Hoe. 20th October 2009. Photo: Matt Goodrum |
Rain meant that today's original plan of fish-plate greasing was no longer possible. Instead six Northern Section volunteers spent the morning locating materials within the hanger and goods shed before transporting them to the Neatherd Road cottage, bringing scrap back to the station on the return trips.
Another busy day on the Northern Section: with most of the team greasing fishplates in Northall Green to make up for last Sunday's washout, Matt and Paul headed up to Hoe to fell some trees that had caused a nuisance during the steam loco's visit in August.
Also, over the last month we have completed 4 days of flailing on the Dereham to Hoe section generously paid for by a member. This has made a real difference to much of the lineside and saved many man-days with a brush cutter. The team would like to thank the member who made this possible.
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Cleaning mud out of the so-called "water feature" where water used to flow across the track. 29th November 2009. Photo: Toby Rawlings |
The epic task of removing any encroaching trees throughout the Northern Section continued with 11 volunteers working from Hoe Road Bridge (1698). Problems lighting the necessary bonfires resulted in Paul and his chainsaw getting a little ahead of the group, making it to the next bridge south.
Five volunteers spent the day ironing out what is probably the worst track fault in the Northern Section by removing the kink behind the Allotments, near Swanton Road. What this actually meant was a lot of digging - mud from the cess rather than ballast from around the sleepers - for a change. A wonky sleeper was also straightened and two chairs changed before an early finish.
By Trevor Brackpool, Owen Stratford, Roy Malyon and Bill Collins.
The weather today was appalling and even worse than Saturday. It was bucketing it down with rain and we had to unload the works train ready for next week. Several switches were unloaded off of the tench that are part of the three-way point that will access the loco shed. Having emptied the wagon, the crane was put away and the train marshalled up ready for next week. We then mustered up several pressed men to assist us to carry the new level crossing gate for Wymondham from the platform, down the yard and onto the wagon as all of the stock was in the way. As we were all wet through by this stage, we called it a day and squelched off home to wring out our gloves and pour the water from our boots. Yuk.
We took the works train to Wymondham with a new level crossing gate. The old gate had become quite rotten, and so we replaced it with a new one that had been constructed by Ian Nugent. Once this was complete, the crane could be used for loading up surplus timbers and rails from the works at the south end of the loop earlier this year. We also took the opportunity to sieve the large pile of contaminated ballast. On the way back to Dereham, we stopped to change a set of broken fishplates and to pick up firewood that we had previously stacked up by the lineside.
The Wednesday group had a superb day north of Kimberley Level Crossing today and half the urgent tree clearance work that Owen asked for has been completed. Today everything was in our favour: the weather, the size of the gang, the strimmer and the chainsaws worked, and the three fires caught light quickly.
A small P Way gang ventured out into the awful weather yet again to continue with the correction works at Thuxton. We changed a further two panels of track in the platform for concrete sleepers, returning the original rails before loading up some of the removed timber sleepers onto the tench. Meanwhile a couple of others swapped a rail that had a fishplate at the mid point for a complete 60ft rail. They then worked through the 6ft rail on the north end of the loop moving up rails to set the expansion gaps. As with this time of year, the light got the better of us before we could complete the work.
Today good progress was made trying to sort overhanging branches on the upside between signal W37 and the mainline. The three volunteers got rather wet and tired but happy!
Trevor, Barry and Owen spent the morning at Thuxton. One of the sets of switches at the south end of the loop has switch blades with non-standard drillings as a result of their previous use. We discovered this when trying to install the point equipment previously and then had a previous failed attempt to sort the problem. We finally managed to overcome the problem of being able to clamp a drill to the switch rails in situ, and set up and drilled all of the required holes for the lock stretcher bar and PW stretcher bars before fitting up some temporary stretcher bars pending the final ones being delivered. In the afternoon we retrieved the flatrol from the siding and returned it to Dereham for reloading.
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Thuxton signal box. 18th November 2009. Photo: Bill Collins |
The recent weekend weather hasn't been too good so progress has slowed a little. The block inner walls are more or less up to floor level, three quarters of the Wymondham end cream panel is done and the concrete sills, expertly cast by Danny, have been bedded in.
A small gang changed the last 23 sleepers that we had left north of Yaxham. We then backfilled these and made some progress on backfilling some of the 104 that have been changed already.
P Way worked at Thuxton again today. With the line in use for several trains, we attended to the job of continuing to set the rails to the correct expansion gaps through Thuxton Up platform in the loop. We also moved and stacked all of the timber sleepers that were removed and replaced with concrete ones, ready for later collection. Having set the 6ft rail up correctly, we worked through all of the concrete sleepers that had been loose laid, crow-barring each one into position to give the correct sleeper spacing and keying up the one side. The cess rail will be attended to once we have worked our way from the turnout, setting the gaps on the other leg.
A team have been removing the overhanging branches between W37 signal and Wymondham South Junction. The trees here are particularly large, so we have acquired a pole saw to get just the offending branches without having to remove the whole tree.