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!