Stake and Chips

 ...no, not that kind of steak... nor the type used to dispatch vampires (although they are a similar shape)!

A pile of recovered stakes

In order to operate the semaphore signals from the box, wires are connected to the levers and run along to the signals by means of flat wheels (to change direction) and pulleys (held on posts) to travel the distance. It is these posts we are (well, primarily Matt is) installing. We recovered a large number of concrete wire stakes from Norfolk as part of a joint exercise in cooperation with various parties. Some of these had wire pulleys (or the remains of those) still attached.

Timmy supervises the installation of the stake (whilst keeping well away from Barras)

Having decided the principal routing for the signal wire runs, these stakes have been spaced along the run to support the wires for the signals. It is then a case of digging out holes in the ground to plant them in. It would be far easier to just stab them into the terrain (as the name suggests ought to be possible), but there are all sorts buried below the surface and once again human moles are required!

The rodding run, stretching towards the signal box

The run from the box up beyond the site of the Junction box (running along the side of the shed headshunt) has now almost been completed, and most of the run on the opposite side of the line, down towards the station, alongside the turntable road is also in place. A string line will be used to identify any discrepancies in height or alignment before final compacting of the ground takes place around the stakes.
A stake showing the punch having successfully
removed the wooden dowel. Hopefully no concrete chippings...

On to these stakes are attached the pulley wheel assemblies that support the individual wires. The stakes have holes pre-cast into them, with wooden dowels inserted. Into these are screwed the pulleys. This is fine, so long as you don't need to remove them! If you are very lucky, the screws will undo, releasing the remains of the old pulleys. Otherwise, you may well end up drilling the screw head remains out. However, you are still left with the dowels and screw threads. With drier weather, the wooden dowels have shrunk enough to drift out using a punch and a big hammer. This can, however, produce chips of concrete and much swapping of stakes to get the better ones!

2-wheel pulley bolted to the stake

Pulley now supporting 2 wires

The next part of this sub-project will be the manufacture of wire wheel benches from sleeper and threaded bar...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fitting The NER Lever Frame

Image
Hello all! Today we're going to show how the unique North Eastern Railway Central Division level frame recovered from Pesspool Junction will be fitted into the S&DR signal box.  The 1861 box at the end of it's life. Note the additional window to the locking room, seen on the left hand wall in this picture. This is the operating floor plan showing aperture for frame and *indicative* joist locations to accommodate this. Dimensions: Apologies: all dimensions used here are imperial as the equipment and building itself looks to have been designed and built using these. They also work out very nicely! Front to back, the surviving box structure measures 10’ inside the walls. This has been used in this plan, and is assumed to be correct. The aperture for the frame to sit is drawn here as being 6” from the front wall. This is our datum, from which the other measurements are derived. This can be adjusted plus or minus 2”, but will then shuffle the rest of the aperture across. If it...
Read more

NER Northern Division Lattice Signals

Image
This is a very challenging blog post to actually write, as there has been a lot of research and work that has turned up new aspects to the story. I shall try to put this together in the order in which we’ve discovered the details! When planning out the scheme, we weren’t sure if the gantry would be able to feature in Phase 1; and upon learning it wouldn’t, we needed a signal to route trains into either the Tebay platform or the Bay platform. In amongst the equipment on site when we got involved was a selection of steel lattice posts (as an aside, there *were* wooden lattice posts trialled by the Midland Railway…). These were all North Eastern Railway, Northern Division signals, that had originally been on the Newcastle to Carlisle line. Brampton had been mentioned as their original location, but that was not important at this time. Besides the three straight posts was a bracket signal, sat on top of the concrete sleeper pile, which looked to be a good bet; albeit requiring some consi...
Read more

The Rafters – Part 1

Image
A couple of nice days over the weekend saw the signalbox acquire a somewhat skeletal appearance as we added the rafters to the previously erected ridge beam – a string line top and bottom ensured that everything was nicely lined up end to end so that the tongue and groove close boarding that will sit on top will be nice and flat and provide a splendid base for the slates.  On completion of this task, someone suggested taking down the string lines until some ‘wag’ suggested that the rafters might follow! So we left them in place! It may look like an unorthodox build process seeing as we have not yet completed the gables, but the slope of the rafters is required for me to accurately build the gables to profile and also to position the very large wooden purlins that will bear a large part of the weight of the roof.  The rafters on the backside will require a little more tailoring, I think, as the original rear wall on which they will sit varies in thickness, is not perfectly stra...
Read more