Rodding again

Tuesday 25th April

Five of us on site today - and the work schedule is ............more rodding cleaning and straightening.!
A new and more effective method of straightening the rodding has been developed by supporting on three wooden blocks and then "tapping" several times with a sledge hammer. This seemed to work pretty well and the ones with a lateral curve are now acceptable for final wire brushing and painting.

Malcolm and John P carried on with the cleaning

And then we attacked with the Rustoleum galvanising paint (an expensive 5 litres of it - hope this will be enough to complete the job).
It took about 10 minutes of continuous stirring to get it fully mixed - and then had to keep stirring every few minutes to ensure that the solids didn' t separate out again - good to apply with excellent coverage and touch dry pretty quickly.
We managed to get 7 of them fully painted before sleet and rain stopped play.

  

We have cleared some of the concrete slabs at the back of Winchcombe yard to store the painted rodding now that it can be let loose on the elements.
After Carl S and Keith L returned from a spot of new cable burying up by Greet Tunnel they moved the coated rods to their new resting place ( hopefully for not too long though )

The first seven neatly stacked - only another 130 to go!

A couple of other tasks have been moving along. A set of locking bars for the electric locks required for Broadway Box have been machined to size by one of our colleagues in Toddington machine shop.
These will require drilling and slotting once their positions have been established in situ on the locking frame.

And Malcolm W has been preparing the trackside markers to indicate the  stopping point for 8 coach train sets.

 

Curly