Water Work Aviemore - 25th October 2015

The temporary water feed to the dining set in the carriage shed had been run on the surface from a tap at The Lodge and this needed to be buried before the winter weather set in.

So the first task was to locate the mains water pipe that was installed some 30 years ago, that feeds from The Lodge to the Steam shed. Luckily Big Davie was present working on another task with Colin Stirling and he recalled seeing a picture of it being laid close to the running track, probably some three feet down.

Nobody knew for sure what other services might be lurking below ground, so hand digging was required.  After about an hour of digging through the surface of the compacted rubble that forms the yard we were lucky, and the pipe was located, in the cess, much closer to the running line than first thought.

 

 

Avoiding the Telecomms cables running the length of the yard, the trench was dug by Stuart and Georgie and the 32mm pipe installed.

Sunday the job was completed, with the fitting of an external stop cock valve and internal tap, that feeds a hose that runs to the catering set. 

 

 

 



 

 

Some of the happy team with the job nearly done.

Colin, Nick, Ray, Hayden and Georgie.

Thanks to Colin Frost for info and photos and my Wife for the not so simple cut & paste!

 

 

Spey Lodge Work -24th October 2015

 

 

Today a large squad comprising Colin Frost and three friends from Ellon plus Mike,Jim Clark, Colin Stirling, Bill Johnson, Davie, Ken and paid staff - Georgie, Stuart and Henry assembled to carry out various tasks close to Spey Lodge, Aviemore.

 

 

  Above trench was dug from the mains water to the Roy Hamilton Shed, after problems in finding old water main and turning water off, a pipe was eventually laid, with further pipework in shed still to be completed at a later date. Also a Telecoms trench dug to the Strathspey Railway Association Spey Lodge (which provides cheap accommodation to Volunteers)

 

 

A new back-up oil boiler and tank positioned onto paving slab plinths. This has to be plumbed in and set up prior to the December Train Service, in case the pellet boiler should let us down again when most needed.  Special thanks to Jim for staying on later than he was supposed to the make the water pipe connection & we hope he did not get too big a row when he got home!
Also thanks to Mike Tough for info and he claims to have been too busy for more photos!

 

 

 

 

 

Water treatment at Boat of Garten - 14 October 2015



A water Treatment Plant has been installed in the Centre platform brick
building at Boat of Garten to provide clean treated water to the water tower
to improve the life of the steam engine boilers.

 

some of the trenching required

 

 The water pipework into the
building for the water treatment plant had been put in by the Permanent Way
Staff.

outside

 

and in

 

With the technical plumbing bits neatly done by Jim Clark (apologies no photo of the man in action!)

 

 Also a drain pit had been dug for the water
from the treatment plant when it back-flushed.  .

 

At the same time as this was being carried out Colin Frost and Ray Kenyon (above)
completed the fitting of insulation muffs on the exposed outlet water pipe
from the water tower. Last autumn trace heating tape had been fitted to the
outlet pipe and insulation muffs fitted but there were insufficient muffs to
complete the job. Colin Frost kindly offered to purchase the remaining
insulation required and fit it, in order that the trace heating would work
more efficiently this winter.

 

 

 An electrical supply was
also required for the controls and chemical pump and the SR electrical
department attended to assist with connecting this up.

 

Above after the installation engineer attended on 14th Oct to
connect up and commission it. (hiding Jim's pipework!)

All that the plant now needs is enclosed with a frost proof box & suitably able helpers needed soon to do this.

 

Decking The Dulnain Bridge - 3rd & 4th October 2015

 

 

Before the Winter weather comes, the opportunity was taken to finally deck the Dulnain Rail Bridge properly, using the kindly donated Douglas Fir timber from the BSW sawmill at Boat of Garten, that was used as a temporary safety deck, away back in February 2014.

 

John Wood lent us his mitre saw and it was invaluable in squaring the previous temporary boards and cutting them to exact length, before screwing down onto the bespoke cut & notched bearers. The power came from the large generator in the Brake Guard Van (BG) fortunately the weather was at least dry.

 

 

Usual Worker to Watcher ratio! Neil Howie trying to make up for it, by taking a paint brush for a walk whilst simultaneously load testing the Up Walkway. 2/3rds of the cess walkway completed on the Saturday.

 

 

Depleted squad on the Sunday, greeted by a cool 1 degree C but fine dry and sunny later, all worked very hard to almost complete the job (few hundred screws still to screw down)

 

 

Some statistics - 140 boards - 4.2m x 75mm x 150mm of treated timber and in excess of 600 fixings, so far. 

Some of you may get a closer look on the 7th November when the DMU is hopefully running on to the bridge as part of the Strathspey Railway Association AGM day.

 

 

The Saturday gang.

 

Thanks again to John Wood for photos and info.

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 





Re-placing Baseplates - Broomhill - 19th September 2015

 

Smaller squad than usual, due to the Strathspey Railway Company Annual General Meeting brought beautiful late Summer weather, I was envious!

 

 

 

Here Angus, Stuart and Andy before they do battle removing elastic spikes, from the normal baseplates, to replace them with the L C type, every third one on high rail and both sides at the joints. In an effort to prevent any gauge widening issues in the future.

 

 

An L C baseplate closest to joint, from this Blog exactly one year ago!

 

 

A welcome break as 46512 "runs round". In total about 600 feet was completed with the old baseplates being re-used, to replace the broken ones (over exuberant use of the hammer during attempted spike removal) during our major re-sleepering exercise of recent times.

Thanks to John Wood for photos and info. 

 

 

 

Re-sleepering continues - 5th & 6th September 2015

A decent squad of 8 continued un-spiking, changing and repacking sleepers yesterday

 

 

Above left, Andy McClintock and Neil Howie crouching (arm anonymous!)

 

 

 

The field opposite a new calf was born, will leave the video nasty out! Thanks to John Wood for info and photo. In all about 30 sleepers were readied for today's gauging, drilling and ballasting.

 

 

Today was Andy McClintock's Birthday (a young 78!) so we gave him a relatively easy job, above and fed him with cake in the afternoon.

 

 

Not many cows today, although plenty of trains gave us a welcome break as it was roasting, here the class 31 hauls the service train back from Broomhill as

 

"The Strathspey Clansman" Sunday Lunch Dining Train (which I believe was fully booked) had the pleasure of Steam haulage as usual.

 

 

Got to mention Bruce Buswell who hails from "East Somerset Railway" extreme right, who did a grand job boxing in the sleepers with ballast and Kevin Morris (walking away from camera) from Big Railway PWay in the Leicester area. Your presence much appreciated,  thank you Guys and safe journeys all the way home. 

 

 

And one final train, to try and catch us out was a special actually heading to Broomhill to collect passengers from "Motor Mania" in Grantown on Spey. In all I guess maybe 30 sleepers were completed but emphasis was on quality not quantity!

 

 

 

 

 



August PWay 2015

 

 

The lack of recent PWay Blog update does not mean that nothing has been happening on the PWay, quite the contrary, just that I've been on holiday!

 

Re-sleepering continued on 1st of August, with a creditable 28 changed until the drill bit got blunt. The following PWay weekend Saturday -Georgie was on holiday and a large squad managed to dig out 50 plus sleepers to beyond Tullochgorum overbridge once the heavy rain stopped, above Martin Macleod left and Jim Clark "resting" for the camera.

 

 

Norman Cameron heading under Tullochgorum overbridge towards Boat of Garten on his Track Patrol from Broomhill. Thanks to John Wood for the photos. 

 

 

On the Sunday there were only two of us, so we decided to continue freshening up the concrete mileposts between Boat of Garten and Aviemore. Above Andy McClintock as 46512 speeds past (hence blurring, honest) This consisted of scraping of the old flaking paint, liberally applying the white concrete masonry paint, let us hope the paint lives up to it's 25 year guarantee!

 

 

Some easier to find than others, above is the 86 mile post, which we will definitely need to chop down the surrounding vegetation when we come to repainting the numbers black.