During the first week of the season we completed work on G17, re-wired the cabinet alongside, fitted new TC feeds and also painted the cabinet. I'm pleased to say that Gotherington worked faultlessly through the Cheltenham Festival week.
Gotherington is not now needed to open again until the Steam Gala in late May, so we'll be taking G19 to pieces this week for it's own clean and paint.
The Railway begins operations on Saturday 1st March. S&T have been beavering away getting the last few bits done ready to open. Points W19 at Winchcombe are now complete and tested.
The three bars connect to three blades which slide together through a casting. Crossing them at 90 degrees are two other blades which are in line with the signal wires for the two facing route signals. Slots in both the point detection and the signal wire bars are carefully cut to allow only the correct signal to operate for the lie of the points and to prevent the points being unlocked or moved if a signal is cleared.
We have also been progressing with Signal G17 at Gotherington. The post is now painted, the top fittings re-attached and the top level of scaffold dropped. The ladder is in the process of being painted and will be completed hopefully tomorrow. Then the rest of the scaffolding can be removed and the bottom fittings attached in readiness for operation during the race week.
In the photo we see Curly wire brushing the ladder whilst Mike, John and Peter set off up the line to help dig in some track circuit cables where P-Way have replaced an old dipped insulated rail joint with nice new welded in IRJs. Nice for it not to be raining.
That's all for now.
Towards the end of the last season we started having trouble with the locking of Winchcombe Points 19. Investigation revealed that the facing point lock casting was moving around due to the timber under it being life expired. I tightened the bolts holding it down and for reliability had to file the lock slot for the normal a bit wider. Whilst not rendering the points unsafe that did put them outside of the blade tolerance for setting the point lock, so a repair was required before the new season. Seeing as these points had been in place for over 20 years and that the stretchers and sole plate were second hand, had home made insulation and a lot of packing to make them fit, and were effectively life expired we decided to replace the lot.
S&T removed all the connections (drive, locking, detection and stretchers) and took them away for cleaning, restoration or stripping for usable parts. P-Way then came in and replaced several life expired timbers, including the one under the sole plate, and fitted a new sole plate. The sole plate is a metal plate which sits under the toe of the points, on top of that timber, and has pre drilled holes and end stops for the point chairs. In this case it also has an insulator built in because this section of track is track circuited. The point lock casting also sits on this plate and is drilled through it. The purpose of the plate is to hold the toe chairs and the lock casting in perfect register so that the gauge cannot alter and the casting cannot move relative to the rails.
S&T then returned and fitted the locking stretcher, along with an insulation kit at one end (track circuiting again) and detection lugs for the mechanical signal detection for facing moves. We also fitted two packing pieces to set the toe spacing within tolerance. This set the switch blades the correct distance apart, so we could then fit the new drive and intermediate stretchers. These are fitted to one blade, and the other blade's connecting bracket is also fitted. The stretcher bar is then offered up to the connecting bracket and marked and drilled to suit the spacing, before being fully bolted in place. This now solidly connected the two switch blades together again. We next fitted the refurbished drive connecting bar, which is driven from a sliding crank which allows alteration of the throw distance and has a bottler adjuster in its length which allows correct positioning of the blades in normal and reverse. We re-used the original parts for this, but fitted a new and correct insulator kit in its length (the old one being track pad rubber and 20mm water pipe, those were the days). This made the points operable from the box for local shunting.
The next job was to fit the facing point lock casting, which Richard C and I did yesterday. The casting was placed on the sole plate with the locking stretcher running through it, and positioned so that the starting slots in the new locking bar were in the correct places for normal and reverse point settings.
We then marked round the casting with chalk so that we could be sure it hadn't moved during the next part of the operation. We had previously had some 'top hats' made. These are stepped ferrules with outside diameters of standard sizes, 3/4" in this case, and a 6mm hole through the middle and in this case allow us to accurately pilot hole the sole plate for drilling (we also used them on the stretcher bars).
Once we'd piloted the holes we slid the locking casting along the lock stretcher out of the way and brought in the mag drill.
This allowed us to accurately drill the sole plate to the correct size for the fixing bolts. Finally we used a wood cutting flat bit to drill the timber, which showed the timber to be solid and healthy all the way through. Normally the fixing bolts would be pushed up from underneath, but this is a horrible job if the timber is already in situ, as you need to tunnel under at sufficient depth to knock the 8" long bolts up through the timber. Nowadays we use stainless steel bolts and nuts, which undo easily after time, so we decided to push the bolts down through the casting and put the nuts (along with 70mm square plates and washers) on the bottom. These fitted well and were duly tightened up, we use locking nuts to avoid them coming loose. Should future checking reveal a loose bolt it is reasonably easy to dig out and get a spanner on the nut below.
The above photo shows the finished job with the casting bolted in place. You can see the bottle adjuster and new insulator on the drive bar, the new drive stretcher, the locking stretcher with detection lugs (blade extenders) (with new insulated rodding couplings) and insulated packing on the right, the sole plate with its insulator to the right, and the facing point lock casting bolted in place.
The next job is to offer up the locking bar, mark the locking stretcher and 'accurately' cut the locking slots. We don't want to get this wrong as this is a pass/fail when you carry out the periodic point inspections. Once this is done the lock bar can be reconnected to its drive and the points will lock once again. After that the final part will be to reinstall the refurbished mechanical detection so that the passenger signals for facing moves are detected.
As well as all this we have signal G17 at Gotherington stripped for refurbishment and continue to move parts and tools into the new workshop, more on those later.
Just a quick update to let you know we're still here. As mentioned previously I was away in Australia for all of October and a number of our crew were away undergoing their own maintenance. Since November we have been gradually moving parts and equipment from the old coach to our new home in our freshly finished workshop. There's been quite a lot to do, along with a handful of minor repairs and adjustments out on the line. The weather hasn't helped, see the photo below showing the new workshop in late November, but we are making progress. Hopefully we'll have a few photos of the inside of the new building soon, once we've got it looking something like. Also we should be starting some winter maintenance in early January; some disconnection and reconnection and set up of one of our older sets of mechanical points at Winchcombe (P-Way changing timbers) and probably a strip and refit of a signal post at Gotherington.
Until then have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Neil and the S&T gang.
Tuesday 3rd Sept
A short trip to CRC today to replace some very tired warning signs. The first ones are at the crossing by the signal box:
John B and John P removing the very faded one:
And the bright new one (complying with current regulations) in place:
This one has much more of a visual impact
Then it's back to base at Winchcombe to do a bit of tidying up at the far end of the new workshop. It is planned to reposition the container which is presently opposite the C & W workshop at the side of the set of blue containers here. This to provide more secure and dry storage for our signal spares.
The whole of this area will be tidied up with a covering of stone/spent ballast
Note the drains here which we have surrounded with aprons of concrete.
This area will be used to tidy up the various larger signalling items which currently are spread around Winchcombe yard.
That's all from me for a while - having a full knee replacement next week so no more clambering over ballast for some time!
Curly
Last Thursday George and I went to Gotherington for one last time, with the remaining parts for the ground signal and a tin of black paint. We fitted the lamp case, balance weight and arm and the disc face and back blind and re-connected it. We then touched up a few damaged and missed areas of paint on the new signal and ground signal and painted a few bolt heads. Finally went to the box to correctly set up the signal wire for the new signal (the wire was just a bit too slack). The adjuster on the lever tail was near the end of its travel and was also partly seized, so we removed the adjuster, placed it in the vice, freed it up and set it toward the longer end of its adjustment. We then cut the signal wire outside of the box and re-jointed it using a short piece of wire and reducing its effective length by around 6" (we had to use an additional piece of wire and make two joints, as jointing a wire needs about 6-8" spare wire on each end to 'wrap' the joint, therefore to just cut and re-join a wire makes it around 12-16" shorter, which would have been too short). Once we'd done this we set the adjuster correctly for a good off on the signal. That completes the job replacing the old wooden post and refurbishing the disc, cabinet and associated connections around them. The below photo shows the completed job, with the signal box in the background.
I'm off to Australia for most of October and some members of the gang will be absent for several weeks due to medical procedures. Therefore there will be little to report for a while. The good news is that our S&T Workshop is now almost complete, so November should see us moving in and setting up for winter maintenance.
Tues 27th August
A bit more work required at Gotherington today. The reconditioned ground signal which has now been cleaned and painted is ready for replacement on its new foundation block.
It's too heavy to transport fully assembled so today just the base casting is being bolted down. The fittings will be put on next week
The cables routed down the Cotswold side of the track here are in need of proper burial and the track circuit feed cables are being re-routed. So a bit more ballast digging required:
A lot tidier now for the cables between the signal and the lineside cabinet adjacent to the line crossing at the end of the platform. The cabinet has also had a coat of silver paint:
Neil C seen here drilling some new holes in the rails with the motorised drill for the repositioned track circuit connections
Curly
