Shopping and Housework

 ... both necessary evils!


We recently came across a quantity of signalling materials for sale at Barrow Hill which looked rather useful towards both this project and the next phase(s)! A visit to inspect what exactly was available, and to discuss payment, resulted in a day trip with a large transit van a couple of months later to collect the bits we had earmarked. This was funded by our volunteers putting their hands into their pockets: our Lottery funding does not cover everything required for the project, and we are always looking for additional donations towards it to help make up the shortfall!

 Some of the materials at Barrow Hill

Many thanks to Mervyn and his team at Barrow Hill: it was great to have a look around and see all the work they have been doing and how much they have achieved! Cooperation with both the Ffestiniog and Corris Railways tied in to this, and I suspect there will be more swaps to ensure everyone gets what they need!

 A heap of items requiring sorting out,
dismantling and storing after unloading

So where does the "housework" feature? Well, having acquired all these materials, we had to put them somewhere back at Kirkby Stephen East. We also took the opportunity to tidy up the materials we had roughly sorted in our stores. This took a fair bit of time and effort, but the benefits are already being felt through the ease of finding components required for the installation works currently taking place!

A tidy pile of downset connections (from rodding DOWN to something else).
It would give the wrong impression to share a photo of the upsets.

For example, we now have all the connections (between point rodding and cranks / levers / compensators) sorted by type and neatly stacked. We can then grab what we need, clean it up and paint it as we require, but more of that in a future post. It also allowed easier movement along the Tebay platform and a better, more ordered workspace.

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