The sleeping giant stirs

Saturday at Toddington

An unexpected call to arms saw 4 volunteer members of the PWay gang, a contractor and a manager spring into action on the unloading road at Toddington. An urgent request to complete this piece of track to a minimal standard to allow a goods wagon to leave the railway was issued, and here we were!

Tim demonstrates the use of the new travel toilet for trackside work

After a briefing from Andrew we set about the day's task, which was principally to cut the last length of rail to size, and fit it.

Easy. In fact that is what JCB operator Stevie was told, could he come out on a Saturday for a quick job involving one rail.

Stevie certainly fell for that one. We worked until dark, leaving at 15.30!

First Andy cut the end off the existing rail, which wasn't square. Then the gap was measured and a corresponding length cut off the replacement rail that we had.

The rail, cut to size, was then dropped into the gap.

Keying up with those old Mills keys was not easy due to all the dirt and rust left after this stretch of track had been buried for decades.

Steve (L) has been on the railway for 40 years, but still has the eye and knocked the keys in with a wallop.

Next we fitted the fishplates. That was also a fiddly job, as the old unloading road had been laid with a very varied selection of old rail.

Here Steve is trying to get a 95lb fishplate to also fit an 'ought-ought' size bullhead rail. It works, but the fishplate doesn't quite sit as snugly as it could.

Tim at the back is on the Duff jack to adjust the height by the necessary few mm.

Then the rail was in, but the relaid section was not attached to the original bit.

Enter Stevie in the JCB! The track was 'tweaked' into the right place for plating up, but....

... there's something wrong about the alignment. The boffins don't like it.

The solution was simple - for us. We let Stevie dig out the offending area, while we had our lunch. When we came back, it would be ready!

And it was. Here's Stevie about to give the outer rail a bit of a nudge, to get it to line up with the curve.

After our lunch, it was straight back to work and here we are straightening out the length between the buildings that was relaid.

Job done, track pretty much straight, and Stevie filled in the area dug out during lunch again. The site was left nice and neat.

The last and hardest job was to pack the relaid track to a minimal standard, so that the unloading road could be used on Monday to ship a wagon off to another site. This meant walking up and down with shovels full of type1and hand packing it under any floating sleepers, of which there were many.

This was the scene at the end of the day. Our job, to make the unloading road usable for a wagon, was complete. The alignment was pretty good too, we felt.

 

 

 

 

 

Update from Verney Junction. 

It has gone to meet its maker, it is no more, it's gone, it is - an ex-junction...

Only two earth bunds remain, all the bricks have gone to the great brick wall in the sky. Except the 4000 now at Winchcombe...

This week's quiz.

The poser two weeks ago was an easy one, wasn't it. Here is one for the slightly more knowledgeable reader, composed by blog watcher Malcolm:

Quiz

1 The South Devon Railway and the London and Croydon used the Atmospheric system instead of locos. Which railway under construction was used as a test site?

 

2 When British Railways was formed how many track gauges did they have? (Excluding the systems in the various Works)

 

3 Where was the first steel rail laid in Britain?

 

4 Which of the following country’s main line railways does not run on the left? France, Japan, South Korea, Mexico

 

5 Which country shares Ireland’s track gauge?

 

6 Ex BR Mark 2 carriages have operated in which countries outside UK?

 

7 Which country was the first to adopt the metre gauge?

 

8 Which 3 countries both have 5’-6” and metre gauge?

 

9 Which was the first steam loco built for British Railways in their Workshops?

 

10 Who built the first Railway Locomotive for Russia?

 

11 The GWR is famous for carrying out 171 miles of gauge conversion in 3 days. Which company converted 1806 miles in 24 hours?

 

12 Where in UK do 2 passenger carrying railways of different track gauge cross each other on the flat?

 

13 Which is wider - the Spanish track gauge, or the Indian track gauge?

 

14 In which neutral country could wartime locos from the Allies and Germany be found working alongside each other?

 

15 Where is the longest stretch of straight track in the world?

 

16 How many track gauges are there in Australia?

 

17 What is the track gauge in Thailand?

 

18 What is the longest scheduled train journey you can make in the same carriage?

 

19 In World War 1 what was the track gauge for the Trench Railways?

 

20 What is the heaviest weight of rail used for regular traffic in the world?

1963 Oxford area steam

More great colour pictures from Derek Palmer, who is sharing his 1963 slides with us. These will later go on to the Flickr site.

Derek reflects back on those heady days:

Walton Well Road, a bit north of Oxford Station was a favourite haunt of us railway enthusiasts in the late 1950s. There was a spare piece of ground, some of it grassed, where we used to sit and multi-task watching the trains and playing cards - Black Maria and Napoleon were our usuals. There were the odd occasions when a couple of policemen on motorbikes would turn up and watch to see if any money was changing hands (it never did). Disappointed, they would then question why we weren't at school, it being a Wednesday afternoon. We had to explain that we all went to either the City of Oxford High School or Magdalen College School, both of which had school on Saturday mornings with Wednesday afternoons off (unless you were good enough at sport).

It had the benefit of being next to the northern access to Oxford MPD and so there were frequent comings and goings.

It also made it easy for us to make forays into the MPD and here on 24th February 1963 are a forlorn looking West Country Pacific 34103 Calstock, and a Black Five 45252.

34103 Calstock was built in 1950 and last shedded at Eastleigh, from where it was withdrawn in September 1965, two years after this picture at Oxford, where it was pushed, dirty and rusty, up against a rather beaten up stop block. What was it doing there?

1936 built Black Five, also at Oxford shed on the same day in 1963. This loco was withdrawn from Bolton in 1966, so still had three years to run.

Passing Walton Well Road itself on 26 February 1963 is 92239 with a freight on the southbound slow line. Beyond 92239 is the double track LNWR line from Oxford Rewley Road to Bletchley. There was a junction giving access between the LNWR line and the GWR line just south of where this picture was taken and after 1951 when Rewley Road station closed the Bletchley trains ran to the main GWR station. With the southern section of the LNWR line now abandoned the Chiltern Railways' trains reach the Bicester line via a new junction at Wolvercote. In the foreground is the trailing junction access to the MPD.

9F 92239 was just under 5 years old in the picture, and had another 3 years to go before withdrawal from York shed in 1966.  At the time of the picture she was shedded at Eastleigh. She is covered in black dirt and oil, and the cabside has become illegible. The freight rake has no fewer than 5 brake vans! What a super picture, with a blue sky and lifting safety valve, and rods down. The driver has caught the photographer's eye too.

Also on 26 February 1963 moving to just south of Oxford station, from a location where the mighty Osney Abbey once stood, is 7031 Cromwell's Castle on a Worcester to Paddington train.

A note for the historians - Osney Abbey was founded in 1129 and became the cathedral of the new Diocese of Oxford in 1542. In 1546 the see was moved to the Priory of St.Frideswide, which then became Christ Church Cathedral and Osney Abbey was then gradually demolished.

BR built Collett 7031 Cromwell's Castle was released into traffic in 1950 and here in 1963 she was based at Worcester on that classic GWR Worcester - Paddington run. But she only had another 5 months in traffic, and was eventually cut up by Cashmores at Newport in June 1964, after a fairly short 13 year service life.

It's another fine picture, taken on a sunny winter's day, with steam on and the safety valve blowing, in preparation of taking the long train on its regular run to London.

Surprise Wednesday job.

Yes, the sleeping giant really is stirring! Next to the many elves gathering to get things set up for those crucial Santa trains next month, the PWay gang was out again today. Given various urgent jobs to do, we came out of lockdown a little earlier than Joe Average, but our job carries little risk as we are outdoors in the breeze, and limited to a small group of six.

So far, so good, until we got out of bed this morning, and saw the weather. It was foul! Seven degrees and heavy rain. Not ideal for working on an exposed embankment. Six of us assembled at Winchcombe, hopping about on one leg under the car boot lid and trying to get the waterproofs on.

Eventually the rain died out, phew! So what was the job for today? A number of welds on the Broadway extension have been found to be too close to the adjoining sleeper, about 20 of them. This probably happened following the stressing of the rail, with subsequent expansion and contraction. But whatever the cause, it is not healthy for a weld to be too close to a sleeper, so the adjoining sleepers needed re-spacing.

The picture above illustrates the point. Here both welds are right on the edge of the sleeper. This needs digging out, but also the adjoining cribs, because if we move just one sleeper in isolation, the prescribed spacing between sleepers will be out.

Our first candidate was right by the foot crossing at the start of the curve leading to Little Buckland. The shovels are all lined up against the Landie, ready to go, but first Robert needs to measure what is going where, and will the distances still be right when we have moved it.

Then we dig out the destination crib and half of the original one, leaving the one behind that full so that the duff jacks have something to push against.

New recruit Andy (R) still hasn't quite developed his biceps yet for working the Duff jacks and needs help from Bob, but Martin is away on his own and soon the sleeper was inching its way along to the new position.

We moved three sleepers here by the foot crossing, and once they were all clipped up again we back filled the cribs until minutes later you'd never think that anything had gone on here, except that 3 sleepers moved along by a few inches.

That was the first one ticked off. There are 20 to do in total.

With the bad weather, getting to work and a debate about how to measure the minimum distance required, it wasn't until after lunch that we had time to do the second, stopping on the way to examine another which, on verification, we thought was probably just on the right side of OK.

Robert here is measuring up again, now near Peasebrook Farm.

This set of sleepers went a lot quicker, as the team was now practised and we all agreed on the required way to measure the distance. We had the Duff jacks in again and the offending sleeper was moved over to the other side of the weld this time, and a bit further along.

Here is a set of three that we moved - nothing to see afterwards, except for the trained eye. Another one off our list. Next time we will go for four in a day.

The light fails surprisingly soon nowadays, so by 14.30 it was time to walk back to our cars, and head back to Winchcombe to put away the tools, before it got completely dark.

It's quite atmospheric, out here in the wilds and with the sun just under the horizon.

It was a jolly day, and motivating. We had achieved something, and were in good company.

Next week looks set for a return of the canopy and Usk teams - fingers crossed!