Sunday 6th November - Richard and Bob Faulkner were commandeered into assisting Georgie mark the rail levels and measuring offsets in the up loop line at Boat of Garten Station (where the Royal Scotsman charter train is often stabled overnight) for the forthcoming relay.
Subsequently the fishplates and keys removed I think by Richard & Fergus on Friday and placed out the way on the down line, as above.
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Saturday 14th November - The plan was to be lifting out the up line rails, alas apparently our 12 tonne rail crane needs a new starter motor....
So for starters, Georgie had us removing the switch plates from the hardwood timbers that will be re-used elsewhere.
Once metalwork removed, timbers rotated and wooden plugs hammered in, some needed sharpening to ease them into the small holes - boys with their toys!.
The rest of the day was yet again refurbishing CS1 chairs - mostly consists of unscrewing nuts, oiling threads & tightening again, a few needed new rubber pads and
fortunately even fewer needed a new bolt, as rotating concrete sleepers wasn't easy - but impossible when rails in! (which is the whole point of doing this task now). Just visible on right is the discarded old one but Richard had bolted off to his next task before I could get him in shot!
Up line on left looking towards Aviemore from footbridge
and looking towards Broomhill, in distance can be seen the refurbished concrete sleepers which Georgie took from us by machine and placed them for easy access when coming to relay them proper.
Many thanks to Richard, John (and his toys), Fergus, Iain, Mike and of course Georgie
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