Wensleydale Railway Permanent Way Blog: It's Too Darn Hot

We seem to have gone from the depths of winter ("Beast from the East" etc) to summer heat wave in only a few short weeks this year. If there's such a thing as an optimum temperature for p.way work, we must only hit it about twice a year, if we're lucky.......

Saturday saw the gang finish installing the 98lb rail in Redmire sidings, using the fishplates we collected from Peterborough last week. 98lb FB to 95lb bullhead junction plates have also now been obtained from our supplier and will be fitted shortly.

Monday saw a visit to Doncaster to collect yet more donated goodies, including 12x baseplated hardwood sleepers and another batch of fishplates. Our stocks of junction fishplates in particular are now looking very healthy indeed.

Andy C visited the caravan site east of Leyburn on Tuesday to rectify some local wide gauge. One sleeper needed replacing, while others were pulled through and re- drilled. Unfortunately he also identified heavily headworn rail, which we'll need to add to the list for attention.

Today (Wednesday) has seen the midweek gang back in Leeming Yard, installing long timbers under the crossing nose on the new points, together with plain hardwood sleepers in the "belly" (middle) of the points: in order to save long timbers, we're interlacing standard sleepers here. The switches for the points have been dragged round from the car park, and will be placed in position this Saturday.

PLANNED WORKS: this Friday we'll be at Westfield Farm, between Leyburn Shawl and Wensley, kicking off a programme of heavy maintenance there which will continue through June. Saturday is back to Leeming Yard.