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dp123

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  1. Idea discussed, approved and installed. These signs have existed for a good while but are increasing and de facto standard (though seemingly not yet universal). Most major points I've used over the last few years have these location information signs. IMO absolutely critical items given the railway now works on travelling labour.
  2. That's a RRAP, or Road Rail Access Point. Nice to see someone making the effort to put a proper vehicle park there, as RRAPs are exceptionally useful. Not only do you have the machines themselves needing access, but the access point needs to accommodate lorries from artic low loaders to 6 or 8 wheel crane rigids and vehicles for the staff. Some existing accesses are ridiculously poor for this and its a wonder how machines ever get delivered. A good RRAP is good for welders, too, as you can back the vans right onto the line and offload their (heavy and numerous) items and kit direct to a trolley or trailer.
  3. This does look (for a short time at least) a bit more fun than benignly watching countless MFS wagons automatically convey material forward on the ruthlessly efficient HOBC.
  4. Just a quick addition to this query, after mentioning they're not terribly common for me, I'm currently on a job at East Mids Parkway with 36 Swordfish on site over two trains ex Toton. Eight slated for scrap, remainder spoil.
  5. Turning over/cascading now is generally determined by how we're to get the trains out of the possession - generally if they're to go out the same way they came in (dead end lines, possession/worksite arrangements etc). The headache comes with resourcing the moves, as using Company A's shunters on Company B's train can be a pain in the backside if that's all that's available. The smart move is to a) plan whole site shunters from the start, or b) use one haulier. Not always feasible as there are only finite resources to go around. At the weekend we can usually find all the locos we want, but not the manpower. The site will ask for shunters for the window of time in which they plan to move the engines around (to stretch those limited shunters at the weekend, they'll be booked to more than one site), so running ahead or behind time leads to it's own problems. On a badly overrunning site with drivers and shunters out of hours, three or four different hauliers, different classes of locos scattered all over the shop is.....a challenge. I once had to divert all booked drivers for a site that had finished early and got shot of its trains to one that was absolutely tanking on Sunday afternoon, which made me awfully popular with the blokes who thought they had a Sunday afternoon off. Nobody who turned up ended up working their own company trains back. Needs must. Stepping up drivers (moving drivers to the train ahead of their diagrammed train in the plan) is handy, but you'll end up with an unmanned train somewhere. The trick is to do it in a way to buy enough time to track a driver down for that last train, often taxiing the first man away *back* to site. Goodwill and a good working relationship with your FOCs goes a *looooong* way.
  6. I checked a consist of Swordfish at Bescot a few weeks ago that were planned on a 6R-something or other loaded with fresh ballast. They're not overly common, compared with Snapper and Falcon, which was a nice change. As Steadfast says, the other boxes are far more numerous and thus get used more. They had long dead electronic wagon weighing equipment on them, which was a shame as that would be exceptionally useful on site. Anything in the 60-ish ton payload open box wagon category gets used interchangeably, for all practical purposes. A ballast notice might say 20 Falcon, but it really just means 20 open boxes. The planners try and allocate the DB contracted wagons first (e.g. Red Snapper) as they're paying for them so they should use them. In reality, the yards make up from what they've got.
  7. We used to run combined UTU/Track Recording Coach formations (circa 6-7 coaches) through the core with 31s in the past. Nice and loud. OLE isolated, middle of the night. Two EDs on load 4 was entertaining enough, those little diesels have a hell of a bass reverb in tunnels, then switching to the juice to scream up the bank into Blackfriars and right through to Herne Hill to change ends and go back to West Hampstead. Screw down at Cricklewood and off to the hotel for tea and medals. Heathrow was a right giggle with 37s, linespeed in possession and choking out the stations.
  8. 216m for a full string, or 108m for a short one, both current standard lengths. Con rail is 188m. Currently eight trains on paper to deliver nationwide, two of the older Cowans Sheldon Long Welded Rail Trains from the 80s, and six Railtrack/NR Rail Delivery Trains. I think only four/five RDTs are currently operational. LWRT sets are self propelled and we knock the engines off on arrival to the worksite. RDT work with the locos providing the power. Once the engines are off, the older LWRT are so much quicker than the RDT as the gantry can get the next strings off the racks and offer them up while the train is dropping, RDT has to drop, stop, then take the rails off and offer them to the chute. LWRT can recover as well as drop rail, and can do con rail. RDT need a bit of modification to the clamps to do con rail. Still have a gang of blokes behind with bars to fettle it around track furniture and into saddles, metal bridging pieces that allow rail to be laid over cables and pipes. The rails are clamped down with torqued racks of clamps on the trains, little wonder chained loads needed frequent examination. If those rails broke free when under tension on a curve....rail is like a whip when in long lengths, you should see even a sixty foot length whipping around when a machine cowboy is attempting a (very naughty) lift solo without a spreader bar.
  9. 150 miles each way not uncommon for some outfits, I was on a relay at Farnborough some weeks ago and there were gangs signing in with Cardiff postcodes....and returning afterwards. They had enough time to get their boots on, get briefed, hang around to box in a length and then basically go home for all practical purposes.
  10. Thanks; the golden rule is if you don't feel up to it, don't do it. I've left site early or turned up later before if I needed more rest, I've known guys to jack the shift in if they're too tired, and rightly so. Attitudes where I am are very good towards it, but that's not always the case elsewhere, especially if you're a hand-to-mouth contractor working one shift to the next. Sometimes those chaps aren't always as well supported by their employers as they should be. Sometimes folk just underestimate their fatigue and think they can make the two hours to sleep in their own bed than another night in a Travelodge. Needs a good level of personal discipline. Taxis are widely used, especially on the train crew side, my experience of those is I've never been closer to death than I have been in a knackered minicab between yard and hotel, and that's in ten years of working red zone, around live juice, shunting in yards, massive T3s full of trains and heavy machinery! Ropey old Zafira rocks up in the snow, first thing the chaps asks in broken English is "Do you know where we're going?" before bombing down the road at linespeed in the ice, or one bloke dumping the clutch and setting off with my mucker half in the back door....sometimes you can't win!
  11. This is one of the biggest issues facing railway worker safety nowadays. General rule is max 14hrs door to door with 12hrs rest in between for us. Fatigue plus driving is horrendous. Big thing as there are more track workers killed and injured on the roads than on the track now. My job is a bit flying squad, I cover two regions and do a lot of driving to long shifts and have to manage what I think is reasonable with regards driving and accommodation. However I have complete discretion to book digs at will and a personal vehicle, it's different when you're a contract gang working to the company rules piled into a crew bus. Fatigue is cumulative, too. The first night you could quite easily manage to do a bit more, but on the last night you could only work five/six hours and still have loads of driving time theoretically available but be on your chinstrap after two days of five hour broken sleeps in a hotel. I have gone onto the hard shoulder even 25 minutes from my hotel digs after a 12hr night shift on a relay, felt fine when started off. Motorway driving is a killer, monotonous. Every major site you sign into will log your travel time and postcode travelled to and from site. It's amazing how far some people claim you can travel in a hour, sometimes..... It's just gone Easter, I was out all weekend and am still doing nights until Thursday morning and just come in a gnats whisker under the 72hr limit, all within the limits but I can feel it already. Fortunately the rest of the weeks work is short midweek possessions only 30-40 minutes from my house.
  12. Not very frequent maintenance, but very frequent inspection. You'll find that pointwork may be inspected weekly. Access during daylight hours is limited, so most inspection and routine maintenance is done at night. Proper lighting is required when you're looking for cracks and small defects, and as others have pointed out, it costs time and money to arrange access to merely install the temporary lighting. If something does go wrong, it's nice to be able to go and flick them on and instantly have a good working environment to get it fixed. A relay site for example will have about a weeks worth of preparation before actually carrying out the work, and at least one prep shift will be mostly setting up the temporary site lighting. You'll see the lamps laid down in the cess with cables run out, so all that needs to happen on the night is the lights stood up. Lighting has actually become a very big thing in recent years, health and safety (any railwayman is about two short conversations away from knowing someone who fell down a catchpit in the dark) and with quite a lot of detailed routine tasks now having to take place at night.
  13. Re: the 47s power controller, I believe they only have two notches to speak of - on, 1/4 and from there notchless (like a 37) up to full. This is from memory from the book "Class 47: 50 years of locomotive history". The /7s may have been modified differently, but don't recall seeing anything to that effect. The DBSO had a four position EMU controller, how the MU system interpreted this as regards the loco powering I'm not sure.
  14. What you can't see is another train, 6Y87, which would have been in Abbotscliffe Tunnel. This is how we work this, and other jobs, where trains require to reverse on site to exit on the line they came in on and there are no facilities or time to carry out run rounds: 6Y87 comes in from Folkestone East, crosses over there and enters the possession bang road (wrong direction) travelling to site on the Up. It's hauled by one loco. The second train, in this case the one you photographed (6G26) comes in the same way shortly afterwards, but top and tailed. When G26 stops behind Y87, we uncouple the country end loco and couple it to the London end of Y87. Now G26 has one loco at the London end, and Y87 is top and tailed. We can then swap ends and work the trains back along the worksite in the opposite direction to the way they came in. This is called cascading. You can do this with as many trains as you've room for on site, before or after the trains are required to work. It all really depends on how the engineers want to run the site of work. Once nuance of this system is that (as seen on this job) the haulier whose locomotive cascades onto the next train assumes responsibility for getting that train off site, even if they didn't work it to site. In this instance, Freightliner may have worked 6Y87 to site, but as a GBRf loco came off G26 onto Y87, GBRf will work 6Y87 off site with a Freightliner loco dead on rear.
  15. Taking advantage of the closure of the Folkestone -Dover route, work has also started at Folkestone Warren to relay the Down Line instead of multiple short weekend possessions and more closure of the line. Daytime work, 2 trains a weekday (Mon/Friday excepted) until the 11th of August. 2,500 yards of track renewal. The down road has been ripped up between Abbotscliffe and Martello Tunnels. Should be continuing with digging out the formation today with 6Y87 (FLHH) and 6G26 (GBRf).
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