dp123

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

Do you know what sort of length of train the signal spacing will allow for run rounds? The absolute minimum for it to be routinely useful would be 50 SLU so as to fit in rail trains that routinely require turning to and from an LDC.

I use it a lot for Kent engineering trains ex-Hoo Jn. Engineers and empties are the staple diet of the spur.

East Peckham and Godstone tip come to mind on the Southern region, too. East Peckham is still in use but as a commercial sand depot receiving commercial traffic, and Godstone is still there with rails (and a dodgy ground frame) and a small aggregate concern, but no longer used by the railway or receives any rail traffic. Nowadays the giant Local Distribution Centres take care of spoil and materials handling. Southern area stuff usually ends up in Whitemoor, Eastleigh or Westbury depending on what needs dealing with. Not all LDCs can deal with every type of waste material so you could potentially end up tripping wagons far away to be dealt with (hazardous contaminated waste, for example - I think Crewe/Kingmoor are set up to routinely handle this. Quite a lot of ex-industrial areas turn up spoil contaminated with arsenic, or heavy metals. Asbestos is very common, especially from station or built up areas). Most places can deal with the main stuff like scrap, spent ballast or spoil though. Hoo Junction no longer processes any materials - it's a marshalling yard for NSC traffic and pre-assembly and loading depot for renewals/Thameslink.

The sidings weren't used but the yard loop adjacent to the station used to be used regularly for engineering trains. The loss of it has made planning trains all the more difficult as practically anything over 36 SLU and a single loco ex-Hoo Jn to points south of Redhill must run via London as anything longer fouls up the station and there's rarely capacity for a run round outside of *seriously* off-peak hours. It was a very useful place to re-orientate cranes, rail delivery trains and LWRT sets, too. Being able to use Redhill meant Hoo could keep ballast trains off saturated mainlines and Metro routes by using the Medway Valley and Redhill-Tonbridge and turning South in the yard at Redhill. In some quarters the loss of it is certainly being felt.

6C99 is running today, went via Strood.

The skeletal frame units were known as the POP train, and served as the test bed for the tilt elements for the APT.

66846 and 847 en route, I'm afraid.

There isn't the capacity at Dover Priory to continuously shunt ballasts and locos around during the day, the conductor rail is still live right through to the railhead and so that's a no-no for groundstaff working in the tunnels, as they'd inevitably have to do - uncoupling those locos can't be done in the platform as the trains required to deliver the quantities required to site are longer than the station, plus Priory Tunnel is still open to traffic. There is a slight ramp up in ballast trains to the site in the next couple of weeks, but the situation on the ground at the moment doesn't require a continuous conveyor belt of trains delivering material yet. The trailing loco is essential because there's nowhere to run round once the train is in the worksite. Again, you can't propel that distance back to Dover as the groundstaff will be walking the train back through a tunnel still live at 3-4mph, and when the train does get to Priory, it'll foul the whole station up while we muck around with running the engine round (which isn't realistic, the trains will foul the S&C required). More frequent, shorter trains aren't an option in the short-term because there simply isn't the traction/drivers/wagons available to commit - plus as mentioned, the worksite isn't in a position to accept continuous delivery. Scraping together two locos, twenty boxes and a couple drivers with a weeks notice for the shift is hard enough. The trailing loco isn't crewed or powering because it doesn't need to be. The train weights are well within the capacity of the traction available to us (including the dead engine). No sense burning diesel and wasting scarce daytime ballast drivers if they're not required, plus TnT saves on scarce groundstaff resources - groundstaff will only be required to brake test and depart the train. One of my key principles of railway logistics (learned the hard way!): KISS!

The buffer stops have appeared as the worksite is now considered a "high street environment" (hate that term) and as such, the track leading to it has been reclassified as a terminal siding to remove the worksite from T3 operating arrangements. Effectively, the railway between Dover Priory and Folkestone East is now no longer part of the national network. There are special operating arrangements to move engineering trains from Dover through Harbour Tunnel to the siding, which is protected by the signals at Dover and a set of derailers at the Folkestone end of the tunnel, and terminates at the buffer stops. The stops can be lifted to allow trains into the worksite. The conductor rail is still live as far as the siding end, and the siding has been christened the Shakespeare Railhead. Buffer stops have also been placed at Martello Tunnel at the Folkestone end, clear of Folkestone East. There's no requirement for derailers at this end as there's no requirement to move or stable engineering trains from Folkestone. A similar arrangement of buffer stop protection exists at London Bridge for the Thameslink worksite, another section severed long term from the operational railway.

We shall see what the relay plan is when it comes in, but it certainly won't be conventional as we can't get the trains in alongside initially as per a conventional relay. I'd take enough material by train to site to relay both roads and stockpile stone, sleepers and rail in the old Yard before the relay takes place, that way you can relay quicker using RRVs and tippers without trying to manage several trains on effectively a single line with limited headroom. I'd personally probably take 60ft lengths rather than use a rail train offloading LWR. LWR needs to be dropped directly on or adjacent to the relay site and we can't do that there. 60fts can be installed individually and welded in situ. We may get away with dropping a couple of strings of LWR at the Dover end and dragging it onto the track bed before shifting it to one side, and make up the balance in 60fts but we'll see. I'll edit this with a disclaimer: the above is my opinion/view, and I'm in no way connected with the engineering side of this project.

I'm not actually sure what the source quarry for the Type 1 was, if I'm honest. The wagons for Dover were loaded from virtual quarry stockpiles at Eastleigh and Westbury. Hoo doesn't really have the space for a recycling operation at the moment, it used to be in the Down Yard (and there's still a levelled off overgrown heap of fines), but the surrounding area is now a wagon loading point for NR contractors. There used to be a spoil road at Grain, too. Spent aggregate currently goes to Eastleigh or Whitemoor for offloading, Eastleigh being the Souths main facility for materials handling. Things may take a different turn once the HOBC makes itself known on Kent....!

I vaguely recall Eurostars being tested to Manchester or thereabouts via the WCML. The working of EPS 37s and match wagons may in connection with that, as the Thunderbird contingency.

Unfortunately incorrect. Hoo Junction does not recycle ballast anymore (in fact, Hoo Junction does very little other than marshal trains from an engineering perspective, witht the exception of the sand and stone trips to Cliffe and Grain respectively). The VAST majority of relaid/dropped railway ballast is newly quarried, recycled now tends to end up in sidings if anywhere or sold on to outside enterprise. The spoil from Dover is going ultimately to Whitemoor, and the quality of most of it is poor enough (the top surface coming off the yard is mainly contaminated with chalk clogged soil, and not a huge amount of stone) that it's not being recycled back into the system, but disposed of outside of the railway. There will be some stone cleaned up no doubt, but certainly most of this will be ex-formation and will be stockpiled for secondary jobs like yards and sidings. A lot of it get cleaned, graded and crushed, then sold on. IIRC our last major customer for recycled ballast was the Swanage Railway. Very rarely do I deal with anything mainline requiring reclaimed stone, the only routine application is when the HOBC does it all in situ.

That wasn't spoil, it was clean Type 1 aggregate, more akin to large-ish chipping routinely used for temporary road surfaces.The rubbish coming out is as a result of clearing the old Town Yard formation to create a decent working surface for the workforce and machines, and the beginnings of excavating the trackbed.