Wednesday 13 February 2019

Home Signal Finished

Tues 12th Feb

Except for the electrical wiring that is.

Six of us at Broadway today to finish the fitting out of the home signal.
The fitting of the down rod which connects to and operates the spectacle plate from the balance weight arm at the bottom occupied a significant part of our day. The top has this fitting to attach it to the spectacle plate.


And at the lower end this fitting screws on to the threaded  end of the rod and allows for some adjustment


The 19ft 6in long steel rod has  to be fed up through the scaffolding to Malcolm up top - John P trying to find the best gap - quite flexible!


Having got the rod secured at the top we found that there was insufficient thread engagement with the lower fitting attached to the balance weight arm  so the whole of the lower assembly had to be re-positioned 4"higher (all very time consuming).
There is a sequence to all this which means that the guides for the rod must be slid onto the rod before it is connected - four of these are shown here:


They clamp round the post. Two of them suit the smaller diameter of the upper half of the post and two the larger lower half. In fact in the end we decided that only three were necessary to support the rod from flexing. Here is a view of the lower one from above:


And a close up of a guide


And down at the bottom here is the balance weight arm with everything connected, including the wire down to the angle crank:



Some of the scaffolding poles get in the way a bit but you can just see the signal wire connected to the angle crank  going off to the left. This has been uncoiled down to Childswickham Bridge and is now waiting for us to put in the stakes and rollers to support it. All the cables have now been installed in the trenches and back-filled giving us access to do this.
The signal ladder has been fully fixed and a concrete block prepared with some shuttering to secure it at the bottom


All of this activity resulted in some scuffing of the paintwork, so the final job was some black and white brushwork to tidy things up. Just the electrical work to do here for the lamps and detector then it's complete. There will eventually be a telephone at this point - probably attached to the line-side cabinet.
Other work carried out today was back at Childswickham Bridge to adjust the position of the horizontal pulley  (on the two concrete blocks) directing the signal wire over the bridge towards the home signal and to fit a plastic tube under the track and across to this pulley to protect the wire. (one half of the tube is parked here for safekeeping until we bury it next time)


The troughing that we installed between the two bridges along the side of the caravan site have got completely filled with leaves from the adjacent trees - so these were cleared out ready for dropping the cables in.

Curly

6 comments:

  1. Exciting times!
    Excellent work on the Home signal.
    Regards, Paul.

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  2. Thanks for this Curly, this follows on nicely from the last report and all is now begining to look a lot clearer to us. You are all doing a great job there, can't wait to see the Broadway box in use with the bells tinging away and the signals moving. Again a great report, thank you
    Regards
    Paul & Marion.

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  3. Thanks for the update, Curly. How much more is there to do to get the signalling in use? Has anyone started on equipping the signal box with its instruments and wiring etc? Finish by mid-summer?

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    Replies
    1. There is a bracket signal to instal on the up-side between Childswickham and Evesham Road bridges (we still need a few parts for this), the distant signal has got to have all its parts fitted and it's motor has got to be re-furbished yet.
      Lineside cabinets to re-condition and instal at the north end of the station.
      There are no instruments installed in the signal box yet.
      Although most of the cables have been rolled out and positioned there are all the additional track feeds for the track circuits to be put in, signals to be wired up and not forgetting the track bonding which is still to be done.
      Telephones to instal in various positions and probably a lot of other things that will need our attention.
      Once all this has been done the whole system has to be tested,de-bugged , commissioned and officially "passed off". I think that we shall be ready for the start of 2020 season.

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    2. Thanks Richard. That's very helpful to manage expectations! I guess you're about half way through the overall process of getting the signalling up and running. I'll be certainly looking on with interest and anticipation as developments occur.

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