KSE Signalling Project

A further update from Bob describing the work undertaken on Monday this week. Today’s session saw the unstable ‘fireplace corner’ at last achieve a stability it has not known for a number of years as we rebuilt the crumbling stonework and infilled all the orifices in the cavity with a nicely fluid mix of cement and fine stones. This enhanced stability will, I hope, provide sufficient support to allow us to remove the bulging inner skin along the length of the rear wall without it collapsing. We won’t attempt this until the new year to ensure we have enough staff on hand to facilitate a speedy completion of the job. Seasons greetings to you all and watch this space..

Having dealt with all the levelling and aligning of the stools for the first section of the rodding run in the previous entry, we now wanted to get everything as "finished" as we could. We started by assembling the A-frames and rollers, then bolting them down onto the planted stools. The next stage was to tidy up the earthworks (the remains of the mole hills!) and leave a nice, smooth ground surface. The rods were then added, being slid onto the rollers and loosely bolted together to give a good idea of how it will look when completed. The rods will be adjusted once the cranks, compensatory and all the benches are in place, but to do any more at this stage would tie us up in knots! Finally, we disposed of the excess soil / ash / muck / digging to help build up the embankment near the Junction box, making the ground frame's rodding run a better product. We also had time to shift the next 5 rodding stools into place, ready for the moles to get busy once more. Time was also ...

A further update from Bob describing the work undertaken on Wednesday this week. A welcome spell of sunshine today saw us begin the delicate task of unpicking the unstable corner of the signal box in which the fireplace had once stood. A hard frost from the previous night had firmly stuck the blocks of stone to each other necessitating some very gentle persuasion with a hammer and chisel. Taking the corner down enabled us to free the last remaining piece of the original string course and lay the remaining stones of the new, lower string course thus completing it right around the building. The Dismantled Corner We will now concentrate on building up the dismantled corner to a sufficient height to brace the rear wall while we dismantle its inner skin for rebuilding. There will be lots of hoping and praying that it won’t fall down in the process! The completed string course on the western side of the signal box Finally, the eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that the corners of the string...