Start As You Mean To Go On

Well the first day of February saw another delivery for CHR, not quite as exciting as a coach or a GWR Manor but equally necessary for the Weston extension!

Photo: CHR Facebook page

This is the latest lot of around 300 sleepers which will be sorted, inspected and made ready for use going towards Weston.  These are reclaimed from relaying exercises on the national network and are a mixture, some are the through bolted pattern which need the bolts freeing off and made ready.  Others are the screwed pattern,  Where the ferrules need replacing these are also attended to as well. 

On inspection these sleepers are sorted in to various categories and used as appropriate, These are generally main line, siding, storage and burn.  As the mother of Forrest Gump would (almost) say 'sleepers are like a box of chocolates, you never know what's inside until you unload the truck'.

So far we have about 1200 ready to lay and about another 1000 are needed, so another few trucks and weeks of sorting to go yet.  This is one of those activities which goes on almost continually so rarely makes news headlines, many thanks to all of the teams that put the effort in to prepare them.

A small but significant fact is that these have been delivered to Weston.  At the start of the push to Weston all sleepers came to the north end of Oswestry station, in the view below you can just about see the stack being worked on last year.

Now that area has been liberated of sleepers and is used by our brake van services.   In that view you can also see the space available for the two extra lines which is the subject of an appeal for funds to relay track and rebuild the down platform.

Oswestry Station Appeal

You can see why we think that Oswestry station is a real gem in the preservation world, a headquarters building of a railway company, a 12 coach platform and three running roads in between the platforms.

There is now a rough timing for work to start on the lowering of the trackbed under the propped bridge and as soon as the dates can be confirmed I will post details.

So until next time