More Bracket Bits

Tuesday 23rd  July

A very hot day at Winchcombe - and some more trial fitting of parts to the Broadway bracket.
Carl S, Keith L and John P departed for Gotherington to attack overgrown brambles and relieve signal wires from their encroaching tendrils.

Back in the yard we started fitting the ladders to the dolls to mark out the positions for the securing holes in the wooden platform:

And then fit the lamp casings for the main signals:

Next was the Call-on arms. These have a different type of swivel casting and are fixed to the doll so that the arm is 4' 6" below the main signal arm (thanks to last week's blog reader for this!)

We have some brand new call-on arms but these need a separate lens holder to be bolted on, so we have to retrieve these from some old ones - more cleaning required! The plastic lenses in these are pretty discoloured so new ones will need cutting to suit.

That's about as far as we can go at the moment with the fittings. Some double balance weight arms remain but we are short of the castings for these. Hopefully being collected tomorrow.

Jim P and myself were despatched to the lineside of the Carriage and Wagon building to rescue a point rodding compensator which is getting clogged with ballast. A new retaining board to be installed to replace one that has almost completely rotted away. Nice bit of shade here!

Meanwhile, Mike S and Paul D have been fault finding on the telephone system and found one of the Winchcombe exchange selectors had a faulty 3000 type relay coil - managed to find and test a replacement in a spare selector :

Here Mike is removing the coil from the old donor selector ready for reinstall action.
These coils are physically interchangeable but there are many variations on the coil resistances to suit circuit requirements - luck was in as they are not simple to rewind.

Curly