The Calm Before the Storm

Its been a quiet week, with Andy C off on holiday in the wilds of the West Highlands, and the normal train service winding down for another year. It all kicks off for the P.Way on Monday though: that's when we'll be taking possession at Leyburn with the aim of installing the new west points under the road bridge before the Santa trains start running at the end of the month.

This new turnout will be longer and shallower than the east turnout which we installed back in 2017.
The latter, an inclined flat bottom B8, was cobbled together from what we had lying around available at the time, whereas the west point is a vertical flat bottom C9.25, and has been specially purchased as a kit of parts from Network Rail's switch and crossing recycling facility at Whitemoor in Cambridgeshire. The letters B and C relate to the angle of the switches, which become shallower as you work through the alphabet (by the time you reach G or H you're talking about the ridiculously long and shallow high-speed turnouts at Colton Junction south of York!) The number relates to the angle of the crossing nose (the Americans can keep their "frogs", thank you), 9.25 relating to a one in nine and a quarter angle.

Given that we'll be working under a long road bridge AND the nights are drawing in AND we can't rely on the sun shining, we've fixed temporary floodlighting to the abutments so we can work safely. Many thanks to David W and David H for supplying and fitting these.

Work has also been progressing off site preparing materials for the ground frame and associated connections which will eventually operate the east points. Swan neck connectors and adjustable sleeves have been removed from some point rodding cranks we recovered from Gainsborough Lea Road a couple of years ago, cleaned up and moving parts oiled. David H will shortly be building a "crank bench" for us, the purpose of which is to turn the point drive and FPL rods through ninety degrees to run in parallel with the track. Well that's the theory anyway!

Twin floodlights under the bridge. There are four of these, so it'll be nice and bright in there!!!

General arrangement of the cranks on the bench we'll be building shortly. FPL on left, point drive on right

Stripping the connectors off another ex- Gainsborough crank. The adjustable sleeve was pointing the wrong way!

All the old gunge was removed from the pivot pin, which was then filled with new oil