KSE Signalling Project

Another concrete bench recovery session: not to be confused with the quest to find my marbles. Or Will's dropped loose change. Honest!  Will's Feet Recently a lot of time has gone in to the lattice bracket signal in one way or another, but we were back digging (mining?) for  gold  concrete: trying to recover further concrete bench legs for reuse. The usual digging out happened fairly rapidly, but cutting the rusted remains of the securing bolts was tougher, and even when these were cut through we had problems. The bolts had blown with the rust build up and were wedged in the concrete. This required much more brute force (coupled with plenty of ignorance) to separate. Will cutting the bolts holding the concrete sections together . Whilst Steve was extracting his foot from the rabbit holes, I dropped down the embankment and discovered another couple of relics: an NER drive rod which would have pushed the signal arm to show an 'Off' as well as a back blind from the same si

Things are a little quieter at the moment as we wait for our joiner to install the windows. So, our attention has turned to trying to reconstruct the tiny fireplace that we believe sat in the corner of the signalbox. All we had to go on was a semi-collapsed pile of soot-stained stone and the archway of bricks underneath that theoretically supported it. As you can see from the first photograph, the arch itself was in a terrible condition with bricks falling out like rotten teeth, so a comprehensive repair was undertaken to remedy this (Photos 2 and 3). We know that many signalboxes were heated with a cast iron stove, but the soot stains on the chimney we can see with the one photo we have of the building convinced us that a proper fireplace was the way to go. The arch bisects the corner of the ‘box meaning that the fireplace it supported did the same and, after building a rough mock-up, we realised just how tight the space for the chimney was going to be – especially bearing in mind tha

Having removed all the old concrete components that made up the original compensator bench (as detailed in our previous entry....), it was time to assess what we could reuse, how we could use it and where, exactly, it should go. At the same time, we were also using another pair of recovered concrete legs to form a new bench to take the 2-lever Bridge ground frame (which controls the crossover to the turntable road). Having assessed what was in place already, we decided pretty early on to replace it and upgrade it at the same time as the S&D 200 work. On the face of it, this seems like a case of making more work for ourselves at a time when we have a lot to do. However, the effort required to get the existing installation up to scratch was significant, and tying the two projects together will lead to a much neater finish, as well as being easier to maintain and use! Rough hole / trench dug to receive the leg for the ground frame bench Not only does the ground frame have to sit on th