Donington Road

Apparently the farmer is watching his topsoil like a hawk and comes running if he thinks so much as a shovel full gets moved. He is biting at the bit to get his land back into production, no doubt to top up early on his already substantial compensation. When the fence is finally put in I think there will be quite a power struggle between him and Network Rail as to who can grab the most land.

It was only going to Maxey, about an eight mile round trip, and around eight or ten lorries doing it every day. The haul road is staying so the fencing will go on the opposite side to the armco. According to John the entrance to the haul road will be nearer to the lamp post and not the existing entrance as it is now. I wonder if it will be where the dropped kerb is, although that does not look very wide.

Thursday 29th July 2021 Lincoln Road, the spoil is nearly all cleared away. i The topsoil which runs along the centre of the photo, it is not what appears to be a hedgerow, but a shallow bank of soil covered in weeds. This will soon be dragged across the bare ground and graded out to re-instate the field back to agricultural use. Tidying up along Hurn Road, removing all the safety fencing and storing it in the compound.

Still working on the spillway. Not quite sure what is going on. Those interlocking blocks are usually seen on grass verges where the cavities are filled with soil and grass so vehicles can run over them. Could they be making an access crossing, a modern day ford, or just stabilisation for a grass bank? If it is for vehicles to cross then traction may be lacking when it becomes a wet grassy bank. I suppose it will all become clear in due course.

Looking a bit bare at Lincoln Road now that the spoil has virtually gone. Could do with the rail brush on both the Stamford Lines, a lot of excess ballast in the four foot.

Don't know, I didn't go to look. There were two ballast trains booked for Saturday night so I can only presume it did get ballasted.

As Crun said not much to see, then Richard showed up without his camera which really confirmed the story. Not to be beaten, a couple of photos from Lincoln Road. The rail sweeper presumably parked up waiting for overnight work or next weekend. The spoil gradually diminishing.

Site update.

More video grabs of work at Lincoln Road. The spoil is gradually being removed. That is one mean excavator, a couple of bucket loads and the lorry is on its way. Auxillary equipment arriving at Lincoln Road for the weekends work. Looks like rail brushes.

The new dive under Up Line signal at Cock Lane. Note the hollow sleeper opposite on the Down Line for cables to pass through. The dive under Down Line signal at Cock lane. The new concrete base for the spillway from Marholm Brook into Brook Drain. These next three photos have been extracted from video.

Not necessarily, if it is showing yellow and P490 at Cock Lane is showing red then he will come to a stop half way UP the incline. Maybe they need a spur at Glinton Junction to stable a banker just in case there is difficulty restarting on the incline.

P490 is after the dive under on the southern ramp.

New signals being installed at Hurn Road. On the Down Line in the recess next to the deflection wall at the A15 bridge. Signal P498 nearer to the entrance of the dive under on the Up Line.

How on earth do you remember such things? That was five years ago , even I had to go searching for that post.

I did some modelling up to about 45 years ago , then life took off in different directions. Family came along and what little money was available had to be spent on priorities rather than indulgencies. I have never returned to modelling, partly because I am not artistic enough to do the scenery and the price of models and equipment would mean giving up other interests. Why am I here on RMweb? Because I admire the craftmanship and dedication that goes into many of these layouts and I really enjoy seeing how different people approach their individual subjects. Why am I here on this thread? Because there is some bonkers bloke who casts little stones and individually places them on the biggest man made Fell in the UK. Seriously, IMO Jeff you are a very good modeller who can put the railway in the landscape rather than fit the landscape around the railway. Then there is that Bodgit fella who moved down sarf (to get away from that Fell falling on his Derbyshire home?) who is a prolific layout builder with the knack of createing interesting layouts in any gauge. What about Kevin at Little Muddle? Fantastic modelling of the highest order. The list could go on but there is only so much time I can spend in front of a computer looking at all these topics. Sometimes I need to get out and report about the goings on at Werrington Junction, yes, another thread on RMweb and that is what makes RMweb such a nice diverse community and the place to be if railways are your interest.

We are going completely off topic here and into a minefield in the heat of the day, not good.

I'll pass on your nice cooling pint of beer I poured for you to one of the orange gang.

The first visit of the track laying machine did both the Up and Down lines equally from Glinton Junction laying (about the third of the overall distance) using about 1500 sleepers on each line. The second visit saw the continuation of the Up line to Marholm Junction laying a further 3000 sleepers. This weekends finishing of the Down Line again laying about 3000 sleepers was done manually. I can only presume that once an opposite line is in place it is much cheaper to lay the adjacent line manually instead of hiring in the track laying machine.

It is bad enough being outside. I think I read somewhere that a certain ambient air temperature is desirable for the stressing.

Heres are the pictures from your twitter link.

The spoil is now being removed from near Glinton Junction. Our friend John, who has been a major source of information seen at the north end of Lincoln Road guarding the old gate that is about to be reinstated this afternoon across the roadway.

More work this morning laying the foundation for the spillway. Then when I visited in the evening two preformed areas with rebar had been constructed. Note the hand tools left there. They will be lucky if that metal disc cutter is still there in the morning.

Work to prepare the proper spillway to take excess water from Marholm Brook to Brook Drain appears to have started. The old temporary pipework has been removed. and a deep trench dug across the former haul road. There were three black pipes put in temporary towards the end. Yesterday this trench has been dug out and the pipes removed. Last week contractors were putting up fencing and managed to dig through Virginmedia's fibre optic cables somewhere in the vacinity of the blue piping which cut off most of South Werrington and Gunthorpe's tv, phone and broadband services for two days. The pipes across the old Brook Drain South carried those fibre optics. We can only presume that they redirected when the Drain was made into a boxed culvert, I guess someone forgot where they put them.

Apart from the the recent track laying, other things around Cock Lane that have happened in the past week. The Brook Drain area at the beginning of July. 7th July clearing all the old hardcore. Yesterday, the area has been covered in topsoil. The Environment Agency access road on the west bank of Brook Drain is well on the way to completion while the Network Rail access road on the right could do with a bit of drainage work and more hardcore.

When you watch Trackside ECML's video the loco is still attached to the sleeper wagons and it appears that it is pushing the whole ensemble. As the track laying in that video was going down an incline, maybe the attached loco was acting as a braking force for the self propelled machine? On my video on Sunday the track laying machine started off going down an incline into the dive under where it then levelled off. As it came out of the dive under on to the southern ramp with those sleeper wagons intow the machine was definately under its own power with no loco attached. Any more speculation is off the radar as I have nearly used up my quota of guessing on the last two pages.