We Must Be Somewhere In The Right Sort Of Area...

Well, it turned out we were in the right place with our compensator bench! So much so, that trying to dig a hole for a concrete leg to go in led to a discovery. The remains of an original concrete leg!!

Jim beside the excavation

Jim excavated the old leg on one visit, which we then lifted out, only to find that the two concrete ties underneath were still in situ. Sadly, we couldn't leave these be, as the new leg needed to be set slightly lower in the ground.

A little bit of stabbing with a crow bar identified that another bench leg was also present, bolted to the two ties! So the excavation grew even larger.

The extent of the excavation, showing the two ties at the bottom,
and the damaged leg to the left

The bolts holding the concrete sections together required cutting with an angle grinder as the level of corrosion since the 1950s was impressive. Once the nuts were removed, the concrete leg was lifted off. This was not a simple lift, as they are large, heavy lumps and the bolt remains were tight in the holes. We levered up and packed until we could then lift the leg off. The weight of everything together also precluded lifting out all 3 pieces in one go.

A close up of the bolt

The first leg is simply scrap, but the second could be cut down to form two smaller legs, for use with a wire wheel or two!

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