Steady progress continues as my heading suggests but de-rusting and painting poles, sorry Posts isnt very photogenic is it?
Visitors have probably seen the stack of painted Posts below the Winchcombe signal box and how it has steadily grown. As you will see they are all lettered with their planned positions at Broadway.
Of course Posts are not all there is to it, we also continue to clean off and prepare the Post fittings, ladders,crows nests, cranks and wheels for signals, as well points linkages for each location and all that has been the main part of the work done.
We also work steadily toward the Concentrator replacement program. The new units should be into Winchcombe and Toddington during the closed season, ready for the start up next year.
Here is another stage of it, Joinery made the boxes, C&W did the varnishing, here is the Winchcombe varnishing front panel ready for the original PO type keys and almost ready to start the electronics, over to you Kevern.
Since we are also renewing other outdated connection systems (only MDF's! ) we need to have ready new cabling to connect the new system to the old original cable pairs and we would rather spend time now in preparation hopefully ensuring that we meet nothing unexpected when we change things over- at least thats the plan.
As part of the preparation we have to work inside the cable head cupboards in the Locking Room.
Your other scribe "Curly" aka Richard C got very wound up as we were finishing off last time as it was almost a game of Find the Lady!
We have three similar cupboards all with heavy steel fronts but only one actually fits each cabinet and you can't tell until you put them in position AND try to lock them. Poor old RC!
Hence we got Alex from C&W to paint on some numbers. Not rocket science but we will be for ever grateful each time we have more than one cabinet open. Thanks Alex, tidy job. Hope that you enjoyed the quick guided tour of the Locking Room, yes, I know its due for a vacuum out.
Oh, nearly forgot.
In the meantime we had reports that occasionally the tie lines were not working properly between W and Todd. We have seven possible routes that choose between two lines in each direction. Anyway the problem was that two of the seven selectors had faulty TL relays so it was pot luck which one you got (the alotter uniselector automatically steps calls round to share the load) the effect was No Dial Tone from the remote end. But thats now been sorted with bits from the spares box and some more help from Paul at DFR, thanks Paul.
Happy Days
Mike S
