Saturday's PWay saw Mike, John, Roger, Martin, Ian and Georgie doing more Measured Shovel Packing near the "Strap Rails" at Kinchurdy - John did take some photos but deemed them "not great really" - as more work is intended at this location, I am sure we will get a further opportunity to explain with photos sometime. Thankfully the weather was very mild and benign - not the forecasted downpour, for which everyone I am sure was glad and they even had time/energy to prep tools etc for
Sunday saw a continuation of changing fishplates towards Milton Level Crossing (above) Angus getting to grips with the new battery power wrench, tightening up the nuts on the new stronger fishplates, with Andy giving them the final tightening to the correct torque - once described to me as "a big man with wee spanner or a wee man with a big spanner" - Andy is 81.5 years young so we concede him a big spanner! In the distance Andrew is undoing the nuts and as we had "possession" of the line Georgie was able to deliver the new fishplates in the JCB and leave for us to fill the front bucket with the old ones, as she had to attend to things at Aviemore.
At about lunch time, Georgie phoned to say if we wished we could pack up and head to Aviemore to view rare daylight PWay work on the mainline - this we jumped at as we were somewhat fatigued. Above looking North from our Tele handler
And looking South from the Davie Dow inspired location.
360 machine would unload from train in siding to it's trailer and haul it to rail end, then load onto tracked truck
then a wee 180 degree pirouette to a second 360 machine
with banksman assisting lining up
and the pièce de résistance - machine automatically spaces them out.
glad to report final adjustments - still require men on bars and a bit string!
then rather less energetically lifting in the new rail, by which point we were getting cold with all the observing that we were doing - we all appreciated Georgie giving us a half day.
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