Wednesday 12 February 2020

More Cleaning

Tuesday 11th Feb

Another good turnout today with nine of us in attendance. So a mixed bag of activity.
We decided to postpone a visit to CRC because it was far too windy to be struggling with fittings on top of the scaffolding  round the outer home signal - will have to wait for a calmer day.

Another signal that requires attention is the Distant on the Bishops Cleeve side of Greet Tunnel. The plan here is to dig the existing one out and replace it with a shorter version. Here is one we prepared earlier - having bolted on the concrete "boot"


We managed to heave these fiendishly heavy blocks into position without the assistance of the Telehandler. Four lengths of M20 screwed rod clamp them securely onto the base of the post (never to be seen again when buried - a job for the JCB in due course).

 Neil C, Carl S and Keith L disappeared off to the viaduct to position a new cabinet ready for connecting a new cable once P. Way and the contractors have finished their work.
Re-bonding the rails is another task we must carry out. This should be fairly straightforward  as the original bonding wire pegs wee all knocked/drilled out before the track was lifted.
While at Toddington they concreted in a post for mounting a trackside phone at the southern end points.

Back in Winchcombe yard we continued with a series of "clean up and paint" jobs.
Peter W busied  himself with a bit of woodwork to make a new crows nest platform - creosoted and re-assembled:






George B and John P dismantle yet another pair of cabinets



Jim P cleaning parts for another crow's nest. Had to resort to splitting the nuts with an angle grinder - some well corroded bits after n years in all weathers at the top of a signal.


And a spectacle plate gets the treatment - plenty of nooks and crannies to tickle out corrosion and flaking paint.


Each of the lenses is secured in to the plate with some small flat clamps. Having got these out the securing  threaded holes need re-tapping. Careful not to break the tap John!!



So, all in all, quite a productive day

Curly


4 comments:

  1. Couldn't the nuts and blocks be replaced with stainless for the crow's nest?

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  2. No. We have plenty of spare fasteners to repeat the operation in 20 years' time! Replacing the timber is pretty straightforward. Don't want any unnecessary expense.

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  3. I had all the spectacle plates for the SVR shot-blasted as part of the restoration process by a small firm that did them for beer money - it saved a lot of manual labour!

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