Gone (Dog) Fishin' and other tales.

Another long awaited update to the blog (hopefully!) Over the past few weeks we have been tricking on with a few of the more mundane tasks that our gang has to deal with, such as the monthly line walks, checking spot reports of roughing riding etc, the continued packing of the south point at Parkend. This particular bug bear has been going on for weeks as the ballast has a tendency to settle into the underlying ash ballast that the original Severn and Wye track bed was built on. This combined with the leakage of the water tank in the embankment above the track has resulted a bed that has been soggy for many years. This leak has been fixed by the sterling efforts of our Civil Engineering team. It is hoped that now the trackbed will have a chance to dry out, aiding our ability to consolidate the ballast to an acceptable standard. This will please our friends in S&T no end!

Building bridges between the various gangs is a always a practical thing to do and in the last week or so  we have assisted the S&T gang working at Parkend by helping them move a shedload of the necessary concrete mounting and troughs for their work in commissioning the new signalbox there.

Works train headed to Parkend.

Shifting concrete outside the 'box.

Plus it is always fun to get a ride in the brakevan and 08 shunter on a working day!

In our last update we mentioned our problems with our Dogfish fleet, more specifically to do with the over ambition of the brakes to do their job. Due to my days off not coinciding with the working days for our gang, I took it upon myself to see what could be done about this.

After investigating and stripping the majority of the linkages out, it was discovered the main problem was due to the bell crank that attaches the vacuum cylinder to the brake linkages. Essentially the brake had pulled hard on, but the corrosion in the system prevented the weight of the linkages pulling them off again.

This crank was seized solid.

This crank should in fact hang free and move under its own weight. Unfortunately due to many years of standing with little or no use, the bearing faces inside had rusted and gripped the ends of the shaft with a tight grip.(Ten minutes with a lump hammer to shift it 3 inches.....) One short trip to Travis Perkins over the road and shares in 3-in-1 oil and WD40 had skyrocketed.

The 4 bolts holding the brackets were removed slowly and the whole assembly was lowered out delicately. For delicately read ‘wellied with a sledge and timber drift until it came loose.’ All that remained was to chip off the rust lamination on the faces of the brackets which was helping to tighten everything up, scrape the powdered rust out of the bearing faces, add judicious amounts of grease and reassemble.

Its free. Note the thick rust dust on the ends of the axle.

All that remains now is to have it tested under vacuum, something we hope will happen ASAP so we can fill it in preparation for a ballast drop.

Speaking of ballast we have been lucky enough to have Quattro training on our railway in the last week with some very interesting bits of kit. They have been trailing a road/rail lorry based ballast vac. This bit of kit can shift more ballast in an hour than a full gang can shift in a days work apparently. I can well believe it!

This is one epic bit of kit!

This is far easier than pulling back with shovels!

 

The RRV is pretty handy too.

The other bit of kit was the RRV 360 with its associated flat wagon. They were using this to place bags of ballast around the working areas for the blast vac to use and train with as well as doing a spot of lineside flailing, a never ending task for our lineside gangs so they were pleased to have mechanised help. They are another impressive piece of kit and very useful. Possibly even more importantly however, they will kindly be donating the ballast they are training with once they are finished. Every little helps!

Something to look forward to in the coming week or so is the return of two 360 RRVs. Although they are training themselves, we will be on hand to get them to move, lift and otherwise relocate kit we have been meaning to get moved in ages. These should provide an interesting week of work and the associated pictures for you followers out there.

There are also rumours of a mainline tamper visiting us in the near future, making use of our mainline connection. Watch this space!

For those readers outside of the bounds of the Forest of Dean, our long term plans for the DFR were published in the local paper The Forester.

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It makes an interesting read and I feel cements the future of the railway in the local area.  Exciting times are ahead of us, and if you feel that you would like to get involved in any way, please don’t hesitate to get in contact with us. Either at Norchard, through this blog, or this weekend (26^th and 27^th September) at the Lydney Model Show.

Ballast, tons of it! And associated shenanigans.

There was much excitement this Thursday down at the junction. We finally have a quantity of ballast to drop in the near future! Two birds where killed with one stone on this as not only have we got spanking new ballast, we also have 4 dogfish filled for the purposes of our ride-on-freight. This is one of the attractions at this weekends diesel gala.DFR Diesel Gala

Much kudos goes to Scott and Paul from the Civil Engineering Dept for coming down to the junction to load them with the JCB 360 as well as the shunting gang for indulging our dragging around of tons of rolling stock for us! Incidentally the shunters meet on Thursdays and this much under regarded section of the DFR would dearly love to have more volunteers join them. Please get in contact through here or Norchard shop if this would interest you.

 Dogfish with ballast, and Weltrol with 360.

And what a train!

Originally we had hoped to fill 5 of them but sadly due to brake rigging issue on the last one, ie. the brakes decided they really liked being friends with the wheels, we had to leave one behind. Its hoped that we might be able to free it off shortly and get it filled for a ballast drop after the gala.

 Sam and James preparing to leave for Norchard.

Being propelled to Parkend (Pic - S.Bolingbroke)

One final job to complete once the dogfish were securely stabled at Norchard was to replace one of the vacuum pipes as safe to say it had seen better days. Cue one late raiding party to the C&W dept and we had secured a spanking new-ish pipe and after much swearing and gesticulating, brake continuity was achieved!

Old pipe plus a plethora of duct-tape comes off.

New pipe goes back on! Pics by Aron Stenning

While shenanigans were breaking loose down the junction, another team returned to Parkend to resume more packing on the dread point. It is hoped this will do the trick once and for all, or at least until the re-connection plan for the goods sidings comes to fruition and the whole point will be relocated. In this case we will be excavating the ash ballast which lurks under the stone to a good depth which will result in a far thicker and tougher trackbed as well as providing better drainage.

In regard to drainage and the hole that we found that had opened in the ballast near Parkend, it is highly likely that it is a drainage gully either for one of the mines in the area or for a culvert for draining the trackbed. Either way after exploratory work it appears to have been an inspection pit that opened up.

Ballast excavated before timber boxing. No pics of that at the moment,

I accidentally deleted the one sent to me... Sorry Rob...

The ground around the hole appears to e sound and the ballast has been boxed away from the hole to prevent more going down. A TSR of 5mph has been instated over the site and each train is watched over the section to make note of any movement that could prove iffy. So far it seems tight. We will be having a specialist drainage company coming in the next week to survey the culvert via cctv.

Until the next time ladies and gents!