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Latest News: Archive
June 2011
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Latest News: Archive
June 2011
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King Edward II at Wymondham Abbey. 2nd June 2011. Photo: James Steward |
Following its 20-year restoration, locomotive number 6023 "King Edward II" arrived in Dereham today. We have been carying out test runs with the locomotive in steam to ensure that everything goes smoothly for its debut passenger services this weekend.
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47406. Photo: Keith Doubleday |
We received word yesterday that LMS 3F number 47406 will be able to visit the Mid-Norfolk Railway to join our first ever Steam Gala on the 16th and 17th July.The loco normally resides at the Great Central Railway, where it was restored from scrap condition only a couple of years ago.
By Toby Rawlings and Gary Hall.
Today the Northern Section group, with the help of P-Way's Trevor and Owen, changed the remaining 53 sleepers in the batch of 227 between Swanton Road and the start of the Northll Green cutting. We even had time to spare, so while a few volunteers continued backfilling ballast the remainder returned to Dereham to look at a bouncing joint at Norwich Road.
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Cleaning and greasing fishplates. 12th June 2011. Photo: Toby Rawlings |
Six Northern Section members worked through another 15 sets of plates between Bridges 1697 and 1698, so this year's fishplate greasing total now stands at 86. With heavy rain on the way we stopped greasing mid-afternoon and spent a few minutes weeding the track and cutting back lineside vegetation.
The Northern Section team decided not to attempt the planned fishplate greasing as the rails were already wet and further rain was forecast. Instead Toby and Tom spend the day tidying up old sleepers from our recent changing activates north of Swanton Road. They also re-stacked several log piles and collected material together for burning. Meanwhile Harry and Graham spent the morning on ballast work, backfilling the new sleepers.
Four Northern Section members spent the morning bashing in replacement posts in order to repair the footpath fence at County School, which had (yet again) been damaged by vandals. We also managed to pull a broken concrete lid out of a catchpit near Bridge 1706. After lunch back at the station we foraged around the site for an hour before finishing early due to the extreme heat.
By Trevor Brackpool and Owen Stratford.
S&T started the day at Thuxton. We carried out some minor modifications to the signalling detection circuits which involved adding polarity change circuitry to the aspect controlling relays for the two colour light signals. With this completed, the existing red aspect detection circuitry for 23 signal was moved onto a new polarised twin relay. The newly freed up half of 2/9 signal's relay covering the same function and the second half of the new relay for 23 signal were then wired up to separately detect the yellow and green aspects of the signals. Previously we had only detected that it was not at danger. This is a subtle change but will enable further circuitry to then be added during future development and also provides a better indication of the state of the signal to the signaller during fault conditions - ie if the signal is not illuminated, then the repeater in the box will also go black; previously it would have shown an 'off' indication. We then decamped to Dereham to talk through the options and work required to commission Dereham Central in order to enable the yard to be worked whilst trains are out on the line before going for a ride behind King Edward II in the evening.
P Way had a pleasant day out at Watering Farm bridge (1691) on the approach to Yaxham. The purpose of our visit was to regulate the ballast after a tamper visit earlier on in the year. A stretch of around 100m either side of the bridge was low on ballast where the track had been lifted and so additional stone was shovelled into the sleeper beds from the spare lifted formation. We also topped up the shoulders as well as enjoying watching the steam engine zoom past periodically.
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Drilling the check rail. 11th June 2011. Photo: Owen Stratford |
A small P Way group carried out a whole load of smaller jobs today. We spent most of the day at Thuxton. The first task was to drill several of the check rails with the adjacent running rails and install distance blocks to bolt the two together. These provide an additional safeguard to ensure that the check rails remain at the correct spacing to the running rail rather than relying on the mechanical strength of the keys, which can crush over time. Once finished, T4 signal was cleaned, rubbed down and given a new top coat of white paint. It had been looking a bit shabby since it was recovered from Dereham bay and replanted at Thuxton without much cosmetic attention last year. We then installed a couple of bullhead rails into the empty chairs at the extreme southern end of the headshunt so that assembly of the new siding can commence. Finally Yaxham level crossing was measured up in preparation for renewal in the Autumn and we then went to Dereham to source and locate suitable rails for the job.
As today was AGM day, we were rather depleted in numbers and tie, so we spent the morning digging out 23 rotten sleepers close to Yaxham Road level crossing in Dereham. After lunch, we headed off to the meeting.
Four members of the soutern section PW team carried on with regulating ballast between the sewage works and Crownthope near Wymondham. This is an area where there was a big ballast drop earlier this year, and the ballast requires tidying up afterwards.