The Missing Link(S)

Tuesday 9th Oct

Six of us at Broadway today on a mission to fit the "missing links".
The long awaited new couplings to join the temperature compensators up to the point rodding have at long last been delivered! All eight of them. Here are the first pair to be fitted:

These have an offset of approx 3" to allow the compensators to be set lower so that the other sets of rodding can pass over the top. All this is necessary because of the limited space between the platform wall and the track.
Quite a lot of head  scratching going on to try and get everything in without fouling:

In the end it was necessary to trim a bit more off the end of an offending sleeper to achieve the optimum positions.
In the absence of a chainsaw Carl S drew the short straw and valiantly attacked the sleeper end with a handsaw. You can see a pair of the offset couplings connected with the rodding for the next pair of compensators passing over the top:

A bit more tweaking of positions is still required but we have all four of them in situ. Called it a day at this point - drilling of mounting holes and concreting next time.

We did a bit more finishing off of the signal wire connections in the locking room. This picture shows the pulleys taking the wires to the direction indicator signal (northern end of headhunt points). These two wires have the ability to be tightened or slackened by a wire adjuster upstairs.

I will attempt to describe this set up. The vertical wire comes down from the adjuster upstairs , round the  LH black pulley and back up and over another pulley on the tail of the lever ((see next picture). The wire then comes down and under the LH red pulley and out under the black LH pulley through the tunnel

And to prove it all worked here is a shot of the direction indicator with lever no. 2  in action.

This signal still has the lettering from its previous life, but luckily this will be OK for entry to platform  1 as Down Main!  I can't remember what the lettering is for the other route but we will probably have to do some artwork! - the lever for this couldn't be pulled today so we will have to wait to reveal.

Curly