Aviemore Running Shed - site clrearance - 16th February 2019

A decent sized squad was called for, as we were hiring in a wood chipper and two operators and the response was amazing.

 

 

 

 

 

In total I think there were a dozen volunteers, too many to name them all, but a special welcome back to Jim Clark, who has got over his eye problems of recent and the Ellon Squad members that made it all the way from Ellon!

  

 

 

Once the Fire Service had been advised a good going fire was used (maybe this is Iain phoning them!) to get rid of the stuff that was unable to be chipped.

Trees were also felled by the Headshunt and logs given to a neighbour over the fence, in exchange for 7 cups of tea!

 

 

Amazingly the site was cleared by 2.30pm thanks to the tireless efforts of John Wood and the tremendous team work of the extended PWay Squad. Well done to all.

 

If you fancy doing similar site clearance work on the Grantown Extension then contact Andrew McCracken - as he is trying to organise dates in March.

 

Once again thanks to Mike Tough for info/photos.

 

 

 

 



Boat of Garten Storage Shed Bases - 13th February 2019

Mike Tough as project Manager was again up at Boat of Garten today.

 

 

East Side Bases

 

 

West Side Bases

 

 

Setting holding down bolts into the wet concrete (the high tech way - not a bit of string in sight!) All twenty four bases were cast, using in total 30 cubic metres of concrete supplied by David Ritchies & Sons Ltd of Aviemore.

 

Thanks to Mike for photos/info.

 

 

 





Tree Felling Aviemore Engine Shed - 5th February 2019

 Beside the original Engine Shed at Aviemore a two track "Running Shed" is proposed and site clearance started yesterday.

 

Mike Tough did a spell helping Willie Dodds in the Carriage & Wagon Shed until our contractor friends Scottish Woodlands Ltd arrived, they did a quick recce, wrote a risk assessment, put up some warning signage and in no time by the two expert chainsaw men had created a huge pile of felled wood at the site of the proposed running shed.

 

Andrew McCracken helped guard the footpath for pedestrians during the felling near the fence and his reward was a boot full of timber for his fire.

A large semi dead birch was left for another day to be pulled into the site by the Railways forklift as it gets cut down and it is planned to hire in a chipper and operator to clear all the brash (Georgie tried her best to have a wee bonfire first though! - to no avail)

 chipper date when known will be advised & help needed ..payment in logs.

Thanks to Mike for photos and Info and Scottish Woodlands for their invaluable help.

 



Panel Breaking and Tree Cutting - 2nd & 3rd February 2019

The turnout on Saturday was Georgie, Andrew McCracken, Ian Stanworth, Mike Tough, Andy McClintock and Les Turner. The five of us spent the day breaking up the so called "panels" from the Aviemore big railway remodelling in sunny weather, quite warm considering the amount of snow lying on the ground from overnight and the generally low temperatures we've been having. Mostly this involved the five of us barring out Mills clips and hammering out Pandrol clips to free off the rails. 

 

Above Les, Andy and Mike in the process of getting the Pandrols out with hammers



Inevitably, Mike's well practiced golf swing made him best at getting Pandrols out,

 

 

 

then barrowing the clips and any recoverable pads and biscuits to a number of stillages which Georgie had acquired. above shows Les barrowing clips away. Star at removing the Mills clips (levered out with a hexagonal pinch bar's spade end) was Ian Stanworth.

 

As we worked away at this, Georgie was running up and down the car park with the Railmaster, collecting sleepers and depositing them in one concentrated heap (above), interspersed with the removal of the freed-off rails to a scrap pile behind the water tank.

 A bit of light relief was provided by Andy McClintock who having warned us all to avoid the areas of snow that the Railmaster had compacted into ice because it was like a skating rink proceeded to sit down on it himself several times. Unfortunately no-one had a camcorder or smartphone to hand at the relevant moments so You've Been Framed will not be contributing £250 to the p-way's funds!

Many thanks to Andrew McCracken for the above photos and text (maybe he would like to become Co-Editor of the PWay Blog as well as the Members' magazine "The Strathspey Express"!)

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Sunday saw Georgie, Angus, Ian and myself tasked to remove trees/bushes obscuring the sight lines between the gabian baskets just South of Broomhill stone arch bridge and mile post 92 1/4.

 

 

We used a trolley to move equipment onsite which was a hard push due to the snow covered rails.

 

This had us cutting a large quantity of spindly small diameter trees along the fence line and drainage ditch and culvert.
  Ian had his new battery powered top handle chain saw put to good use cutting and delimbing trees with the larger ones dispatched with my petrol chainsaw, angus was head brash man, and any high limbs were removed with the pole saw.

 

 

As we cleared a section of brash Georgie followed on with her magic shovel clearing the ditch of any debris and to make sure it was flowing freely, looks fantastic now, wish I’d taken a before pic. Weather was cold, brisk wind and 4” of snow underfoot. Job done by 3pm

 

 

Back at Boat of Garten a giant Meccano set had arrived - for "Operation Undercover"

 

Thanks to John Wood for all the photos and text.





 

 

   ,

 

 

 

Andrew



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.

 

 

 



 

"Operation Undercover" commences in earnest - 19th January 2019

Following on from my last Blog entry, Mike Tough (Volunteer Project Manager), Georgie and Nethy Steel Ltd our contractors, had a site meeting and an early start date was agreed with

 "Operation Undercover"- erection of open ended clad, Carriage Storage Shed - three "roads" wide by three carriage lengths long, at Boat of Garten - South Yard. 

 

 

Yesterday a ceremonial cutting of the first sod was attempted, albeit that the ground was frozen solid! (Above Front Left to right - John, Mike, Martin, Back Me (hat on) and Fergus) photo was kindly taken by Roger Snowdon whom is making a good recovery after a recent illness and we hope to see him back for light duties soon. 

 

 

Our first task was to carefully clear all the S&T miscellaneous bits and pieces back to where Fergus is on the right, so that our contractors have 2 metres of trip free access right round the proposed building.  

 

 

We even found some of our own PWay heavier material - base plates/chairs etc that we barrowed clear. In the background can be seen the wooden/soil loading bank which unfortunately, much to Georgie's sadness, also has to go. (Note also Rylock fencing below Boat sign for later)

 

 

Georgie also continued unloading spoilt ballast - which was donated recently by Network Rail at Aviemore, to level the entire site.

 

 

An almost empty train was loaded, marshalled and despatched, by the time it arrived in Aviemore, it was devoid of the fencing material (thanks to John & Fergus) required on just over of a mile of fencing to repair and be made stock proof using the aforementioned Rylock as above now strategically placed at 100 metre intervals in the Up cess.

 

To keep us warm as the sun sank, a start was made removing the sleepers from the top of the bank and

duly taken away by Georgie.

Thanks to all whom attended much was achieved but still an awful lot to do in such a short space of time..... Mike advised that "steel & cladding material are due to arrive 25/1/19 then hopefully foundations will be cast early February and finished by March" - weather permitting. 

 



 

 

  

 

 

Digging out sleeper beds near Summit - 5th & 6th January 2019

 

First PWay Weekend of 2019 saw as expected, a small dedicated squad, tackle possibly the least liked task of all - (as illustrated by PWay equivalent of "The Scream" by John Wood below)

 

 

 digging out sleeper beds in preparation of the never ending maintenance of the Railway Line - in the form of a continuation of re-sleepering towards the Summit between Aviemore and Boat of Garten, which we spent from March to July doing last year.

 

 

Above two adjacent life expired sleepers meant the whole bed must be dug out.

 

John reports Saturday -  "We managed 66 of 128, 42 being done by an earlier squad leaving 20 to be done, and no pesky trains to interrupt us either. Georgie noted that some of the sleepers to be changed were originally from the 1930s, so due a well earned rest me thinks (lets hope the replacements last that long!) Weather was cold but ideal for the task in hand." 

Thanks to Georgie, Mike, Martin and John - especially for info/photos (well one of them anyway)

 

 

Today saw an even smaller squad of Myself and Georgie dig out the remaining 20 beds before lunch and after we sourced 36 skirted cast fishplates and 36 skirted rolled fishplates, these are to be changed in connection with the re-sleepering of the 18 lengths of track. We loaded them into the "flatrol" wagon with all the new sleepers (as above) to be delivered to site by rail.

 

 

Above and below is the site of the proposed three road storage shed at Boat of Garten, devoid of the usual rail vehicles.

 

 

Mike Tough who has worked tirelessly for Months already on this project, hopes that a start can be made by the local construction contractor Nethy Steel Ltd sometime soon.