Digging out at Broomhill - 17th & 21st February

Georgie got a new very handy attachment for our Road Rail Vehicle - a clamshell bucket able to scoop the ballast in between the sleepers - saving a lot of manual back breaking shovelling

as photo'd by John officially on the Grantown Extension on Saturday 17th February

It made digging out the plain line easy 

alas the switch and crossing still problematic requiring the manual sweat of John, Richard and Ian - 180 feet plain line dug and 2/3rds of the switch.

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Yesterday me and Mike had a couple of hours digging almost to the nosing of the crossing but other more pressing track maintenance took precedence.

Mike mentioned that within about a Month of installation the first time round tie-bars had to be inserted to hold the guage and they have only multiplied over the years! Apparently the whole alignment is to be slewed to the right above......  

 

Finishing one major project, start of next! - up to12th Feb 2024

Small but capable squad met at Boat of Garten on Saturday  and Georgie said the dreaded words - "a bit of ballast tidying boys"

All headed out to Kinchurdy Straight and proceeded to tidy ballast and create decent cesses  possibly the last, for the time being. 

 

Thanks to Georgie, Andrew, Fergus and Mike for photo/info

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The following Saturday saw the start of a new project - the replacement of the run-round switch at the North end of Broomhill Loop and replace four panels of track beyond.

Commencing at Boat of Garten. 

Big enough squad to get split up - myself and Michael above tasked with getting all the small stuff ready to be taken to site but after carrying sixty skirted fishplates through the obstacle course at Morleys - our conclusion is nothing is light on a railway!

John and Martin above selected appropriate rails for Georgie to load onto PWay train and they also dismantled the extremely out of guage components off the switch. Mike did battle with plumbing jobs am and assisted pm and took the photos.

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By the following Tuesday the still out of guage P'Way train was assembled

and Dave Green took this photo prior to its slow propelling movement all the way to Broomhill under the watchful eye of Georgie and Nathan from the brakevan.

Past Tullochgorum overbridge, disturbing the cattle!

Broomhill Bridge necessitated stopping first and checking!

Re-marshalling and shunting required to unload using, our 12 Tonne Rail Crane recently re-livered.

Switch panels now ready for further transfer at appropriate time.

Thanks to Dave, Roddy, Ryan for all the photos

 

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