Boris

I was on Kierans pump trolley/torture machine, I had the horn

This series had a change of film crew and imo is the worst one yet

Allegedly the concrete is coming tomorrow

Preserved Railway politics strike again. There are no winners here and likely neither are telling the full story.

This is quite interesting, going back earlier in the thread showing some photos of the goods shed and power station conveyor, this is a video on youtube from some urbex guys where they climb around and fly a drone around so we can have a better look!

It's not surprising, but there's some weird gone on with all this anyway, Weardale is owned by the same outfit. Now looking at Companies House for Weadale, the whole lot was mortgaged to the Auckland Project just before it went up for sale. Then oddly enough everything was then bought, by the Auckland Project. Smells a bit like a done deal. And then of course you have their accounts 6 months overdue for filing.

It does have a broken window on the other side as well, visible through the vest end

I foresee problems approx 30 mins after close of exhibition. Person at control point struggling to remove controller from rectum.

So many obscene comments, so little time.....

Some more progress to report on the layout recently, point rodding is coming on very slowly and Kev wired something really cool up tonight as well. It's a slow job, but the rodding and crank benches are gradually spreading and ideally by the time they are finished it will be dry enough for the ballast to dry in the cupboards at the club. We had a playing night last week and it was remarked on that you when shunting the yard you only need to control one point to shunt the yard once your loco is inside the traps. It's much easier to shunt the yard from the front of the layout rather than reaching over all the running lines and platforms, so it was commented wouldn't it be nice to have a local control for that point. Kev, who is our resident electrical genius, suggest a latching DPDT switch like they use on stomp boxes on guitars, and promptly turned up with one this week and installed it in about 20 minutes. It means we can control the yard from either the control box, or have someone with the walkabout controller at the front of the layout shunting the yard and interacting with the public. I think its really cool anyway, even if nobody else does! The gratuitous gubbins shot showing the DPDT switch on its mount replicating exactly the arrangement in the control box. The mounting on the front of the layout, this will be hidden behind the front curtain so as to discourage little fingers playing, but you will be able to feel for it if you know its there. I was so impressed I even shot a video.

Those BDAs are well worn all right, they are the 70s conversions from the steam era bolsters Es and still have horse hooks on them!

To be fair the new bridge bits all came without strap protectors as well from Tees yard

I told you it wasn't exciting! Everything survived the heavy rain quite well over the weekend as it was prolonged rather than one intense burst. Not much exciting has happened aside from a few more bits of scrap being taken away. Concrete pouring should commence by the end of this week. Rebar because some people are excited by that kind of thing.

They are but get quite busy with the Roc being up there now. There is another car park also open further down Leeman Road past the old NRM entrance on the left hand side just before you go under the low bridge with the railway line on top of it.

NYMRFOOTAGE is a third party channel run by one of the local enthusiasts. I can't really just wander about the site randomly taking photos I am afraid, access is work related and there isn't that much of interest going on at the moment. It's literally just a mass of rebar with some formers until concrete pumping starts next week. I mean I can take loads of pictures of the Readymix lorries if you like?

No, that's his role model, he's more of a miniature traffic cone kind of person

- How do they plan to get the concrete on to the bridge deck - pipe it from the road / overbridge or is there closer access available for concrete mixer trucks? Well they could use the station car park which is only the other side of the EWS wagon in the picture BUT the bridge to the station car park has a weight limit of just 3.5 tonnes so this isn't practical. They are going to implement traffic control and pump the concrete down the main road in the background of shot 2. A standard concrete line pump will run up to 150 metres (450 feet or so) which is well within the reach of the main road above the grass back, again in picture 2, In the gap between the two rail bridges (2nd pic), there is what looks like a new footway - does the lower level of this provide the route for point rodding / signal wire / comms cabling etc? That is indeed a walkway, there is a matching one of the other side above the river so the bridge can be inspected, I believe the footway panels will also lift out to enable access further down. We won't be running S&T equipment along the underside of the walkway as its a pain to sort out/access. I am not sure where the new rodding and signal wire run will go i.e. whether it crosses the new span or the old span, I'll find out for you. The one in the photo will likely see regular use by signalmen taking tokens to longer Up trains in the summer.

ICI on Teesside had a set of RCH 5 plank wagons that were still used on the mainline for moving salt into the 1970s, until one pulled apart in the middle of a train due to rot. Although to be fair i think they were local trip workings.

To be honest you haven't missed much, they are still on adding rebar to the deck, which isn't the most interesting thing to show but there are a couple of photos anyway. Next week the concrete arrives for the deck so that should be a little more interesting for you all as it will finally start looking like a bridge. I mean realistically its not that far off being finished, the rest of it is putting rail and S&T back together. In other news we have had the point rodding (probably 70+ years old) regalvanised and started

Yeah, often some good stuff in the south sidings near the ROC. And Pacers, get them whilst you can.

After all the activity recently it has been a relatively quiet week bridge wise, prepping the deck for its concrete by adding the rebar, but the remaining span has also had another coat of paint. Other than that the rest of the activity has been logistical, the road railer has gone to Pickering for the Bridge 8 project and the Kirow 1200 was taken to Grosmont MPD on Saturday to allow the crane staff to service it prior to departing today.

I'm reserving judgement until I've seem it all put together with track etc. Driving past from the road it doesn't look massively intrusive, but my inner nerd would have liked to see something a bit more heritage looknig. Then again you can't have everything, at the end of the day it means you can still see steam trains running, which was at risk if the bridge wasn't done.

The technical term is shitehawk

It looks bridge like now chaps, they got the 2nd beam in yesterday and the deck girders in today. You are right Andy, having looked at it properly there are indeed ribs on the outside, and i think photograph 3 answers your other question?

No, ask Dr Pepper.