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Gill Head: Kirkby Luneside's neighbour


Physicsman
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About 3 weeks ago I started initial work on the underbridge area, then got sidetracked. The overall landscaping took over, and continues to do so.

 

However, the underbridge area has now been ballasted and today I added-in the base landscape for an embankment. There'll be plaster going on tomorrow, and then all will be clearer.

 

The first pic dates back to April 11, the rest are from today.

 

Jeff

 

 

 

 

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Jeff, I know- it's your railway...but the contractor wouldn't have lifted the dirt up the hill to dump it.  It'd be cheaper to work it out the end of the cutting, and dump it out there than to lift it up.  
IMG_9752_48151_1Z22_ArtenGill crop.jpg

gives a good idea of what they did in real life.  I know, the spoil hills would cascade into the asleway, but that's because the contractor was out to make a bob on the whole project :)

Edited by peach james
Got the image _wrong_!
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39 minutes ago, peach james said:

Jeff, I know- it's your railway...but the contractor wouldn't have lifted the dirt up the hill to dump it.  It'd be cheaper to work it out the end of the cutting, and dump it out there than to lift it up.  

https://www.randbbrewing.com/greenscreenipa?fbclid=IwAR3p2AQvCiqJylgEE5H3mE1Zz2PCwlksY9pigTZPipTtU8x2uJxj-Pl8WQg

gives a good idea of what they did in real life.  I know, the spoil hills would cascade into the asleway, but that's because the contractor was out to make a bob on the whole project :)

 

James, what I've done isn't any kind of fiction, it's what actually happened on this site.

 

Have a look at the pics of the prototype I posted last Sunday, May 2 (page 38 of this thread). You will see the humps of the multiple spoil heaps that were used to create the cutting where I've put the reverse curve.

 

I'm not home at the moment - I'll re-post a relevant image when I get back.

 

Jeff

 

 

Edited by Physicsman
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The image I wanted to use was
IMG_9752_48151_1Z22_ArtenGill crop.jpg
(but apparently I was a numpty and posted something else in, and it's too late to edit it...)

When I saw the one with the sheep on top (the top photo, in the middle), I had assumed that the spoil was level outwards.  I'm a bit shocked that the contractor would do it that way, because it would seem easier to me to have dug off the tops of the hillocks and dumped down hill, even at the expense of moving more material.  Someone did a time/motion guess and came up with what they did though... the middle one with the sheep on it, that's quite the pile of dirt to wheelbarrow around.  (it's probably worse than your last house's garden even !)

The number I have seen referenced is 1 yd/100'/man/day  As in, a bloke with a wheelbarrow can dig, move & dump a yard of fill 100' away, in a day.   That makes those spoil heaps all the more impressive.  What I suspect happened is that the contractor moved as much as was practical out the ends, and cast the rest over the top of the hills- that's why the spoil heaps at the end are as big as they are, and the other ones are rather less so.  I know there is the wood carving image of them using a horse in a trace to drag a wheelbarrow uphill to dump, and the comments about boulder clay for the whole line...

 

James 

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I think your theories may be correct.

 

I know they had to dig deep for the viaduct pier footings, but as has been pointed out on here recently (I think it was Steve) there seems to be a lot more "spoil" than you'd expect. After all, the whole right side of the cutting (as in the photos above) looks to be man-made.

 

I think it's wonderful discussing details of the prototype rather than the kind of made-up layouts I used to dream about.

 

Jeff

 

 

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10 hours ago, peach james said:

The image I wanted to use was
IMG_9752_48151_1Z22_ArtenGill crop.jpg
(but apparently I was a numpty and posted something else in, and it's too late to edit it...)

When I saw the one with the sheep on top (the top photo, in the middle), I had assumed that the spoil was level outwards.  I'm a bit shocked that the contractor would do it that way, because it would seem easier to me to have dug off the tops of the hillocks and dumped down hill, even at the expense of moving more material.  Someone did a time/motion guess and came up with what they did though... the middle one with the sheep on it, that's quite the pile of dirt to wheelbarrow around.  (it's probably worse than your last house's garden even !)

The number I have seen referenced is 1 yd/100'/man/day  As in, a bloke with a wheelbarrow can dig, move & dump a yard of fill 100' away, in a day.   That makes those spoil heaps all the more impressive.  What I suspect happened is that the contractor moved as much as was practical out the ends, and cast the rest over the top of the hills- that's why the spoil heaps at the end are as big as they are, and the other ones are rather less so.  I know there is the wood carving image of them using a horse in a trace to drag a wheelbarrow uphill to dump, and the comments about boulder clay for the whole line...

 

James 

The current accepted planning rates (Planning Planet) for hand excavation are 0.6m³/hour for sand and around 0.4m³/hr for clay.  For transportation manually,  6m³/hr up to 10m, 3m³/hr for 20m and 2m³/hr up to 50m, so an approximate figure would be around ½m³ per hour for one man. Even taking into account primitive wheelbarrows, that would suggest something more in the region of, say, 6m³ per day, 8 cubic yards per labourer.

As for the spoil tips.  Obviously the terrain and the use of viaducts instead of embankments here means that a balanced cut-and-fill operation wouldn't work in the circumstances, so the spoil has been disposed of as economically as possible.  The work would have been done in stages, perhaps working in 6 feet steps.  The full width of the cutting would have marked out first, and the ground cleared and levelled within that area, the spoil being spread over the land outside the cutting, on the lower side. I suspect that they would then take a strip out a further 6' or so deep and create a temporary track to take the spoil to the end of the cutting to dispose of it at that level, running away from the cutting line itself, at the one level.  Once the cutting was down to that dig level, the process would be repeated, with the spoil tip at the lower level, and the process repeated until the required final track bed level has been reached. Much would depend on the hardness of the rock being excavated, and also with the amount of land that had been purchased in the first instance, and knocking off the top of the hill would have required a greater footprint to be bought. No doubt the foreman would have considered all the options available, and bearing in mind that mechanical plant at the time was fairly limited, manual labour was the prime mover, and cutting out rock unnecessarily wasn't really an option, as horse power or a small steam loco could move materials much faster than a man, but couldn't really assist in the excavation to the same extent.

Edited by Nick Holliday
Correction of miscalculations
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8 hours ago, Physicsman said:

I think your theories may be correct.

 

I know they had to dig deep for the viaduct pier footings, but as has been pointed out on here recently (I think it was Steve) there seems to be a lot more "spoil" than you'd expect. After all, the whole right side of the cutting (as in the photos above) looks to be man-made.

 

I think it's wonderful discussing details of the prototype rather than the kind of made-up layouts I used to dream about.

 

Jeff

 

 

 

I think, perhaps, James has overlooked the time factor.

 

Labour was still relatively cheap, and it was possible that additional

manpower was extracting , and grading, spoil from the sides of the

cuttings, at the same time as the bulk was shifted out the ends.

Hence the job was finished sooner.

 

With regards the false side to the cutting, the way I see it is there is a

rock face, indicating the lie of the land, and that it was a "valid" cutting.

But grading the cutting side may actually have necessitated removal of

some spoil sideways, and that could, safely, be dumped as soon as it was

on the natural downgrade. (this, in turn, prompts the thought that whilst

it's harder to extract up the cutting side, the distance the spoil has to be

moved may be considerably less than round the ends).

 

I agree, Jeff, it's most interesting to be applying logic to the prototype, and

discussing. In fact it can also be applied to the ficticious layouts. I have, a

number of times, posed the question, Would XYZ Railway have spent the

money on ABC?  (e,g. bridges over odd sidings, or lightly used spurs, which

could have been served differently).

 

Keep up the good work.

 

p.s. I'm still using the tub of B&Q Chocolate ?? emulsion, after your

recommendation on KL2. In fact it's my go to basic scenic application.

Including sleepers, and rail rust. My recollection of railsides in the 50s,

was a darker brown, than we see offered on many layouts, or indeed

the WSR, these days.

 

TONY

 

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Nick - thanks for your thoughtful and very interesting contribution to this topic. Always good to have a quantitative angle on things.

 

Tony, ditto. And btw, that paint was really good - no longer available, as far as I can tell. It may have been re-named, though.

 

Jeff

 

 

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The land the railway has to buy is the land within the fencing I suspect the top layer in the middle of the cutting was dug off and tipped over the sides.  However as they dug deeper it would start to be more of an issue to lift it out of the cutting so a some point they started taking it to the ends and dumping it there hence the end spoil tips are bigger than the side ones.

 

I dont know how accurate this is but you may find it interesting

https://victorianweb.org/history/work/sullivan/7.html

 

What I do know is we do not work like they did. My grandfather was a foremen in a Seed Merchants.  He would open the gates in the morning and close them at night in the summer that would mean a 14hour day.  He would work hard all day to keep the men working hard too. The heaviest sacks were 2cwt.  He was doing this until retiring at 66.  Still he lived to 93.

 

Don

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25 minutes ago, mark axlecounter said:

By heck Jeff , thats amazing that s curve looks like the one at Horton in Ribblesdale just before the station. 
 

keep up the good work buddy 

 

Mark T 

 

Ha! It certainly wasn't planned! 

 

Nice to see you're still looking in, Mark. Are you still doing Blea Moor and Hellifield?

 

 

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17 hours ago, Donw said:

 

I don't know how accurate this is but you may find it interesting

https://victorianweb.org/history/work/sullivan/7.html

 

What I do know is we do not work like they did. My grandfather was a foremen in a Seed Merchants.  He would open the gates in the morning and close them at night in the summer that would mean a 14hour day.  He would work hard all day to keep the men working hard too.

That's a fascinating piece, and I can well believe the prodigious outputs that a good labourer could achieve.  The figures I quoted are for an average (flabby?) 21st century worker.  I have worked with men who could achieve similar feats as those Victorians, but they were the exception rather than the rule. One, single-handedly,  lifted up the tail of the Ford Transit mini-bus to allow a tyre to be changed, whilst others could accurately toss clay from the bottom of a 4m deep pit! 

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Superb as ever Jeff.  I keep looking in most days, but feel that a constant response of 'Wow' or 'Wonderful' would get repetitive! Instead I just star in aww at your achievements!

 

Had a zoom call with some friends last night, its become a regular fortnightly thing during lockdown where five of us from different parts of the country get together every other Saturday evening.  Its been a nice contact over the past year, and all of us have agreed it needs to carry on when life returns to normal!  Anyway, back to the reason for telling you that, during a 'share screen' moment, which is usually railway photos from the past trips or highlights, I have two or three times earlier this year, put on rmWeb and shown your viaduct, to the accompanment of several gasps and 'wow' comments. Having not shown it for about six or eight weeks, I thought it was a good point to give them a progress update .... everyone agreed you have totally nailed the S&C 'look' even without doing any more to it!

 

So there you go, there is a reason for publishing plenty of photos, we are in awe of your skills ... and you have achieved our 'commendation for modelling ability' award!  One did ask when there might be trains running over the section .... I told him not to be silly and go to the back of the class, this is landscape modelling and the trains just got in the way - honestly, what do some people think this is?? A model railway? Pah! :)

 

Keep up the good work Jeff.

 

Rich

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Rich, thank you very much for your (usual) very supportive comments.

 

I'm glad you choose to comment intermittently as I really appreciate the positivity, but - as you say - continual "Wow" etc. does get a bit wearing.

 

I hope to gradually improve the look of the viaduct area, as the scenic stuff is the best bit as far as I'm concerned!

 

Jeff

 

 

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Ok, I thought it was about time to do something a little different, though - as you will eventually see - there is method in the madness (there usually isn't!)

 

In the opening post of this thread I showed images of the structures I planned to incorporate into the layout. One of these is the lovely brick occupation bridge that runs across the cutting a couple of hundred metres north of Kirkby Stephen station. This allows access for livestock from one side of the railway to the other (pics 1 and 2).

 

Pic 3 shows the plan I drew up in 2019 (it's dated May 11, 2019), based on online imagery.

 

Pic4 shows the scribbled conversions based on this plan that initiated this afternoon's activity. The 3 hours work will be summarised in the following post...

 

Jeff

 

 

DSCF0036.JPG

Occupation bridge01.jpg

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The basic method is a slimmed-down version of what I did with the viaduct.

 

4mm ply - easy to cut with a scalpel or craft knife - was marked out and the front fascia piece cut out (pics 1 to 3).

 

The pier backings use 12mm birch ply, left over from the viaduct, as does the road deck. Pic 4 shows the assembled "skeleton".

 

Pics 5 to 7 show the fascias glued and screwed to the skeleton.

 

Arch rings and liners will (eventually) be constructed and added on - I need to re-stock with plastikard first. And no DAS bricks here, the detail is too fine. So it'll be Slaters 4mm brick sheet.... To give a sense of scale, the whole structure measures about 32cm x 9cm max.

 

Jeff

 

 

 

 

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I thought I'd better show the context into which this structure will be placed.

 

On my original plans, from 2019, I envisaged the bridge a little way round the bend from the underbridge. However, because of the way the real layout has developed I couldn't do this and was faced with scrapping the idea. Last night I decided I'd still use it to bridge the cutting, a bit further round, AND act as a scenic break as viewed along the reverse curve from the viaduct.

 

Nothing is ever simple, though. Excavating the cutting faces was ok - except the 2 sides of the cutting were on ply bases, which were awkward to remove in a confined space with a Stanley knife. But the area is carved-out - it will need tidying up and a pathway added in on both sides of the cutting. More fun for later.

 

Plastikard will be ordered tomorrow.

 

Jeff

 

 

20210509_194200.jpg

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22 minutes ago, teaky said:

Well, that's disappointing.  I was expecting individual bricks and a brief explanation of how you made the kiln.

 

Cheeky!

 

Just because you "won the lottery" of madness in suggesting/predicting how the Cumbrian lunatic would/should build the viaduct...

 

1 hour ago, Rowsley17D said:

That's not going to move in a hurry!

 

To be honest, I thought it was a bit flimsy by my standards.

 

Especially as I've just discovered the ply fascia is only 3mm. Oh dear, I wonder if it will drop off in the next 200 years?!!

 

J.

 

 

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