Yellow Machine & Weeds get a repreive! - late May & 12th June 2020

Our intrepid Station Master reports  "Don't Panic!

 

 We are not about to demolish the Island Platform Waiting Room.

 

Before Georgie took a well deserved short break from work (end of May) we agreed she should leave the Colmar jib on the platform near a power supply, so that I could use a heat gun to remove the old branding. Took 90 minutes just to remove one label and some paintwork came with it! Horrible job" - which he regrets ever mentioning but he has a spray can of JCB yellow to speed things up...…"

------------------------- 

Finally the twice postponed annual weedkilling train got underway yesterday - the class 08 Shunter driven by Georgie, hauled the fully fitted train from Boat of Garten to Aviemore, with the operators Mike, Ian and Martin getting PPE'd up on the brake van.

  

 

Cool calm dry weather - perfect for spraying - meant slow plain sailing on the propelling movement on return, above approaching the splendid lattice Down Distant signal for Boat of Garten

 

 

and the grand co-acting Down Section signal, of note is Martin's unscathed spraying boom, less said about Mike's the better!

 

 

Someone had the bright idea of filling up the thousand litre tank quickly from the steam locomotive water tank above.

 



 

After this the guys washed their hands (for more than 20 seconds) and luncheon was had sitting in the sun on the platform.

 

The intension was to spray all the way to the River Dulnain but on the descent to Milton Bridge some of the spray nozzles clogged up with what looked like grass - stop pump - stop train and get down, unscrew and clean them out, this kept on occurring until the overbridge at Tullochgorum at which point the decision to go back to Boat was made, to further investigate.

Above shows the problem in the almost empty plastic tank - moss? our only conclusion was that there must be a birds nest in large water tower - Mike checked it out but no trace.

  

 

The rest of the afternoon was spent trying to flush out the tank - scenes akin to Laurel & Hardy ensued, when the we used the power of the fire pump.

To be continued..... another day.