Still Getting Connected

Tuesday 21st Feb

Overwhelmed today with 8 of us turned out - our "bijou" carriage mess room could barely cope with the first cuppa of the day.!

Mike S and Len went off try and detect cable faults that have been reported between Toddington and Winchcombe.

The rest of us went off to Winchcombe South to carry on with the re-connection of the new Starter Signals. On the walk up platform 1 we were just in time to see the delivery of the new temporary Elf Centre:

And couldn't help noticing the recently poured concrete foundations for the new Visitor Centre - glad we didn't have to mix that lot by hand.

Anyway, back to the day's objectives.  Having got most of the pulley wheels fixed into position last week we still had to configure an additional wheel at the base of the new platform 2 starter signal to allow the reverse pull to the banner repeater. So another concrete block was required. A bit more shuttering and more concrete

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And here's the vertical pulley in position on its template. The  second picture shows the double pulley wheel set which will connect to this pulley and to the angle crank on the signal post.

To enable all this to be connected, we have to re-install quite a few signal wire stakes. Each of these has a pulley wheel set attached on which the signal wires are supported. The stakes are hammered into the ballast and then given a shot of concrete to keep them rigid. Getting the alignment correct to avoid drain covers and other obstacles is essential to prevent rubbing of the wires.  We previously removed many of these stakes to provide access for the track modification activity. 

Keith,  as usual,  shovelling ballast to create a pocket for the concrete

Richard C, having  been nominated  the departmental painter, was despatched to tidy up the paintwork on the two new signals. It's quite difficult to prevent chipping the paint on the posts when mounting the fittings so a bit of re-painting is required. Took the opportunity to add another coat of gloss to both posts and their ladders. 

While all this was going on the ballast train appeared and deposited 6 wagon loads of ballast on the newly laid track. So just in case you haven't seen enough shots of this on the P Way Blog, here is our take on some beautifully deposited ballast:

Quite a bit more to do and just over a week to go before the first service train - so no pressure then!

Curly