It’s not all just sleepers and tea drinking you know. Some days there are other jobs to be done,
whilst still leaving time for tea.
Going towards Weston there are relatively few civil
engineering features, which helps with keeping the workload and costs
manageable. One major structure on the
way is the old cattle creep. After years of being buried under muck and
accumulated tipped waste, the cattle creep was cleared not long ago to allow
inspection of the structure.
Photos: CHR Facebook Page
The beams were declared life expired and have been
removed. Generally the supporting
structure is sound but like anyone wishing to show their best face after years
of hiding, a few cosmetic touches are required. So this week the Thursday Gang
have been preparing the ground for the facelift. The supporting walls require some repointing
where they have been submerged under the mound of waste.
The build up of general muck and damp rubbish around the
bricks can lead to long term problems particularly with frost expanding the
entrapped moisture when it ices up, this leads to the face of the bricks
cracking off, apart from looking bad if left unchecked further action weakens
the whole brick and compromises the structural integrity.
In this case the solution is to repoint the affected areas.
Grinding out the loose mortar, raking out the loose stuff and then repointing is
an important job and it’s another step on the way to bringing structures
on the line back up to full working order.
Being out in the country, any power tools require an energy
source and the use of the generator.
Hopefully when the line under the bridge has been regraded it will be
possible to bring tools down by train from Oswestry Station, for the moment all
tools have to be manually carried or pushed to the working location. The joy of extensions is that it’s a longer
trip back to base each time, but it makes lunch seem much tastier.
Many thanks to the Thursday Gang for this important work and
we hope to see trains over the replaced cattle creep before too long. Please see Dave’s picture album of the latest
work and many thanks to him for taking the photographs.
To get to Weston will require a significant investment for
CHR and following the TWAO process funds are limited.
The TWAO (basically the legal permission to operate the
railway) is now in place and this took longer and cost more than expected
draining our funds. So to help us reach
Weston please come along and support the railway by taking a ride on operating
days or make a donation (link top right of the page) or come and join in. Tea drinking skills are especially
appreciated.
The replacement beams over the gap will be about £4000.
Details and booking for Santa Specials are now on the
website so if you have a little one, or not so little one and feel the need to
meet the man in the red suit, please come along.
Thanks once again for looking in and keep a watch out for
the next update with more news.
No comments:
Post a Comment