With the Santa trains over, the winter closure period is a useful time for our track volunteers to get on with some maintenance and upgrade jobs. These tasks just can’t be done when we are running public trains.
A relatively small project to kick off the winter programme of work was the replacement of a point timber. The timber in question was near the ‘wee cabin’ at the town end of the main platform. The work was done to enable the installation of point control rodding. This will mean the points for the run round loop and loco yard can be controlled from the lever frame in the signal cabin. At present this task is done by the traincrew on the ground. However, the point timber was not long enough for this and needed to be replaced.
The rails had their fishplates removed, the check rail removed, and the track jacked up. This was to enable the old timber to be slid out. The excavator was not available. Thus, brute force was needed to lift a 14-foot timber from a stack in the station yard. We then had to move it to the work site. Clever brains decided to slide it along the top of the rails when they got far enough, no need to be heroes here.
With the new timber slid in, battery tools were used to drill the timber and bolt in the chairs before the rails could be keyed-up and everything joined together again.
All in a day’s work for the track team.
If you would like to try your hand at volunteering, we would love to hear from you. Visit our volunteering page for more information.
