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Left. The broken out
rail from the crossing. The rail at the bottom is steel
which we put in last year to replace the worn out
aluminium. As we didn't replace the inner rail we just
cut through the stud ties. |
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Work on the line was a family exercise. Even Jasper
wanted to join in. The first job was to take a level
survey of the exisitng track. It worked out that the line
dropped over 90mm in 10m (right side of the garden). Not
a lot but on a 3.2m radius it did slow down smaller
locos. The difference between the two sides of the garden
was 50mm. We ramped this out at 2.5mm per m. Well that
was the plan.
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| On the start of the adjusted tack was the
task of adjusting and lifting the block pavers that line
the track bed. these were put in orginally straight on to
the soil and have moved over the years. This time we
cleared the ballast back and bedded the bricks on to a
sand cement bed. The timber with the level on was used to
set the second side level with the first.
The red spots in the flowers are pegs which were set
to the final rail level. They were space at 1m centres
around the work area.
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The new platform was set out from the
existing track. We left the original block pavers in as
they helped support the curved formwork. We made the
curved edge of formwork by fixing three strips of hard
board together. |
| With the platform cast
attention was turned to the york paving, crossings and
lifting the track. |
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Left - Drena ( the one on the left)
working with a breaker lifting up the second crossing. Below
- The track back in place and the new crossing cast in
concrete. The timber and clamps at each side were used to
suspend the track while we cast the concrete.
We took the oportunity to work in the good weather.
One week later and we would have been in the snow.
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Above left - Having problems getting ballast we
brought the track bed up using concrete. Actually pound
for pound (not accounting for labour) concrete is cheaper
than ballast. Left -The first train across the new
crossing. We used a rapid concrete on the crossing so the
line was back in use 4 hours after we mixed the concrete.
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| Below - As mentioned back in January we
were playing around with treadle switches. We came across
a design flaw, mainly that the use of long and short
trains together can create problems. Basically if a train
stops on a treadle and then starts up again it will reset
the signal to green even if a following train has passed
the signal. |
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