Finishing Number 3

Tuesday 11th Oct

Five of us returned to Cheltenham Racecourse Station to complete the re-furbishnent of signal no.3 adjacent to the road bridge at the end of platform 1.  We borrowed one of the P Way trolleys to transport all the replacement signal parts and tools up from the crossing by the signal box. This was accomplished after the loco had run round with the first steam se vice of the day. No SPADs were reported!  -  here we are ready for action:

The signal post has already had its 3 coats of paint applied so the brackets for mounting the spectacle plate, detector, lamp case and signal arm were fitted at the top first. The down rod, balance weight assembly and angle crank followed at the bottom. The ladder had to wait for its top coat of gloss black (at the top), and white over the lower section. Here's Richard C putting the finishing touches to the ladder:

The temporary Ground Signal has now been removed:

 

And will eventually be installed at the north end of the station. Unfortunately the heights of the signal fittings were not quite identical to the original settings so the two existing cables for the detector and lamp were short by about 6 inches so we had to "untrench" them to find a bit of slack. We were lucky! All are now re-buried and tidy.

We managed to disconnect the ground signal and re-connect and test no.3 between trains so there was no disruption. Here' a view of the finished job:

Meanwhile up in Hunting Butts Cutting the headshunt points were getting some attention. Any shunting of the stored sock on the 2 tracks has meant that the points have to be barred and clipped for 

each move because the casting on the hand operated spring lever was broken. Here's the offending item:

Neil C and Jim P spent most of the morning sorting this out and it is now fully operational

with a replacement assembly which has a pretty strong ' snap' on it.

Curly