Plating Up

Tuesday 24th Oct

Five of us turned out at Broadway today to carry on with the fitting of the two sets of steel trackside mounting plates for the pulley wheels and cranks. Today was going to probably be our last opportunity to drive the pick-up along the track bed as far as the signal box with all the heavy stuff. Just as well that the two steel plates for platform 1 side had been delivered - 2 big lumps 8 ft long by 16” wide. We also decided to bring the majority of the pulley assemblies and angle cranks plus 3 lengths of our lovingly restored point rodding (for alignment purposes) ,

Ballasting between the platforms has now reached the signal box and beyond southwards so we had to distract the mini-digger operator for a while to clear us a working space round the concrete base by platform 1 (hope we’re forgiven for holding up P-Way activity! wasn’t long)

Here the magnetic base drill really comes into its own . We are joining the two steel plates together a cross plate underneath. These holes (for 6 x M10 bolts) are countersunk so that we will end up with a completely flat surface on which to configure the pulleys:

  

The whole assembly is then bolted down to the four channels which are anchored in the concrete.

A total of 14 holes and counter sinks - took most of the morning by the time we got it all secure. I have temporarily placed one of the pulley wheel assemblies in position to give an idea of what things will look like - this one will direct a signal wire north up the platform wall . The wires to this side will pass between sleepers under the tracks: 

After lunch we repeated the exercise with the two larger plates for the exit from the locking room tunnel. Same number of holes and same procedure. Ballasting on this side not quite reached us yet so lying down to fit awkward nuts underneath was a lot easier. 

 

Again Malcolm and George were down in the locking continuing with the configuration of locks and locking bars. Much drilling and filing  and fitting still to do:

 

Curly