Boat of Garten and nearby, goings on - Week ending 26th January 2019

 

On Tuesday 22nd, myself and Roddy had a free day, so we decided to go to the "outdoor gym" at Boat of Garten - Georgie soon directed us to the Car Park, where it is pretty full of partly dismantled (thanks to Mike, Martin and others) short track panels - which unfortunately need to be removed before the start of the Steam season.

 

Above Roddy finally removes the Mills clips after the rails are out as it's much easier!

 

 

All the clips were tidied away, with the Pandrol/Mills clips and plastic biscuits all into separate stillage. Given that as a result of the lack of availability of the road rail excavator a considerable number of hours and physical effort have had to be expended in taking these small panels apart. This has rather dispirited the PWay team involved in the work, when if we had the use of the road railer each panel could have been moved to a position away from the car park as a unit. Furthermore at some point we might need to put these panels back together!!!

The first level crossing North of Boat of Garten - Milton No1 (below) will see an increase in road traffic at some point in the future, in connection with the removal of the High Voltage power lines and associated pylons.

 

 Georgie identified that the above trees posed a sighting issue and I had a few hours to spare Thursday 24th...…

 

 

 armed with a decent bushmans saw and after much huffing and puffing, dragging the cuttings to in behind the stored concrete sleepers (which one day maybe be used to get us to Grantown on Spey) the view from the crossing looking South has vastly improved, I hope!

 

 

Above the return working of the empty train mentioned in the last Blog, now loaded but awaiting warmer weather! Before being unloaded, as the ballast has frozen solid.

 

 

By yesterday thankfully, the frost had gone and the wet ballast made for easy dropping, we had the Class 31 driven by Steve and a Peak Railway Volunteer driver up here for ( no ) skiing! to assist as the 08 was having some light servicing.

 

 

 No other volunteer was able to assist Mike at Boat of Garten with changing a dud sleeper and he felt it!, in what was an extra day but despite heavy drizzle good progress was made thanks in large part to Georgie’s skilled use of the JCB and ballast wagon drops in the "four foot" (between the rails)

 

 

The proposed shed area is now well levelled off, apart from a bit local to the buffers and loaded mineral wagon of ballast left there will fix that.

 

 

Some building materials are on site now, the cladding on the car park as above and some cold rolled steel, neither stored where they should have been but should be moved easily enough to the correct site South of the South Signalbox.

 

Thanks to all that contributed to this team effort Blog.