black and decker boy

The man on the right is holding the prism on the railhead, the central man on the left is manning the survey station. the other 4 are lookout \ COSS type people. I suspect they are surveying the track so they get the OHLE at the right height, the piles are presumably already driven and covered by the regular square covers in the cess with a separate array of piles for the loop \ siding \ headshunt (hence the double number of square covers staggered left and right of the 6ft). They could also be existing drainage chambers \ covers?

I have previously expressed interest to them but never got a reply.

The young boy fell down an unprotected drainage pipe \ chamber which was certainly a lot deeper than the centre of these driven piles (which shouldn't be much different to normal ground level). I suspect this is probably more driven by an incident on NR where a person (or persons) have tripped whilst walking along \ over \ past a pile in the dark and the subsequent investigation has made a recommendation to fit cover plates. If there is a further instruction next month to paint them luminous yellow or fit solar lights then we'll know more people have gone for a burton.

Reverse parking has been a creeping syndrome of idle minds in Construction H&S departments for a number of years, reaching further down the supply chain each year. Once engrained though it's very hard to remove and I seem to reverse park everywhere now. The psychologist that dreamt it up must have made millions by now :-)

One sentinel railcar secured :-) Ice been bidding on eBay for over a year and keeping loosing out to people paying over £125 for part built or unbuilt kits and £250 for finished kits. Current price for a new kit, £95. Nice!

Some of them a bi-mode, many are (currently) straight AC electric. The IEP Bi-Modes have less oomph than HSTs and are expected to be limited to 110mph on diesel so if you need to run a bi-mode railway because the wires aren't ready then you have problems 1) running speed and timetables don't work 2) the longer distances on diesel aren't compatible with the size of fuel tanks fitted so will disrupt diagrams. The AT300 variant being bought for the West of England has a higher power output and bigger fuel tanks than IEP so should match HST timings as I understand. The lack of OHLE also affects release of diesel units to cascade and strengthen regional routes (eg pompey and Bristol \ Exeter) and allow release of the sprinter \ pacer types for t'north or scrap.

Freight liner have sent several HHA bogie hoppers to Booths for scrapping in recent weeks, bogies & brakes recovered for reuse apparently but bodies cut up. All freight companies are using their coal hoppers in aggregates use, either as replacement for older types or as extra capacity (construction is booming again).

Well worth the effort, a common feature of these vans and seldom modelled, you can looks very good indeed as a result

Brake van rides around the yard at Kirkmellington colliery 1971 The colliery buildings with a merchant collecting his latest load

Shunting spoil tippers at Kirkmellington around 1971 The signalling at Kirkmellington, little to do now the remaining branch line is closed and being lifted

Tasty ;-)

I think they key here is that NR don't need planning permission for the OHLE except where on listed structures.

Received an email from Liverpool today: Hello We thought you may like to know that an item you have on order with us, on order id 1611291, has had some information about its release date added or updated. Dapol 7D-008-001 Class 08 diesel shunter 13115 in BR green with early crest and no yellow warning panels £169.00 Our latest information from the supplier suggests this item will arrive with us between April 2016 & June 2016 Whilst we are hopeful this information is accurate, manufacturer lead times are frequently prone to be delayed. This information is to be used as a guide only. We hope that this email has been useful. Regards Retail Team

That warship looks fabulous

A great announcement and very welcome for both our colliery and North East private light railway layouts.

For me, Shunting or Roundy-Roundy operation is all about the mindset, the imagination of what the train is doing, how it would perform. I have built and exhibited a roundy-roundy and two shunting layouts and also assisted on several more. I can get lost in the operation of each and every one for 1 hour plus at shows and sometimes its hard to hand over to your relief crew if you are in the middle of a shunt or running sequence you have built up in your head. To aid shunting, we often set up little cameos, a pile of logs, sacks, packing crates etc at strategic point sin the yard, we can then aim to shunt the respective wagons into place, both full and empty and obviously then shunt them back out later. For roundy-roundy, we choose different running speeds, set signal checks or station stops and need to flight the slower trains in amongst the fast or semi-fast workings and avoid the bang em round quick procession which is neither fun nor realistic.

I suspect that my post http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/78877-gwml-electification/?p=1975300 has relevance here. The last update I have seen shows Chippenham Station Footbridge construction as March 2016 with OHLE equipment through Chippenham from Summer 2016 onwards through Christmas 2016 though its a moving feast if other access opportunities arise and resources are available.

Unless you have dedicated and known utility corridors (eg, concrete troughing), we are taught (even compelled by HSE guidance) to assume that cables runs will be haphazard in routing and most certainly not as indicated on historic plans (which are often schematic rather than precisely dimensioned records). To get round this, there are a suite of tools & processes available. The most user friendly is ground penetrating radar type surveys which use several cable locating methods and which can give a 90 to 95% accurate 3D survey of an area and any cables, pipes or other buried underneath. These give you a pretty good steer when doing your design and help inform the contractor of working methods, risk and time allowances that will be needed. These surveys are then usually double checked with CAT surveys and hand dug trial pits during the initial stages of construction to physically prove there is no clash. Any works within set distance from known or suspected cables must be hand dug anyway. These safe distances vary depending on type of cable \ pipe, owner of the pipe and what it is you are doing. For piling works, the exclusion zones to fibre optic cables, mains electric cables, gas & water mains are several metres. I get the impression that NR doesn't (or didn't) have any such rules on piling next to its signal or power cables with the results clearly evident in the Thames valley. Whilst doing these surveys in advance of designs on a live railway is going to be slow and expensive, it would still have been quicker and cheaper than all of the broken cables, lost service and delay minutes incurred so far not to mention the political and commercial consequences currently being played out on the GWML by having late running designs, late running construction and a fleet of new trains with no where to run.

I posted this on another forum a week or two back, it might interest some on here too:

I found this http://paul3715.tripod.com/exfoster.htm And this http://paul3715.tripod.com/exarc.htm

I'm fairly sure that Fox Transfers do the CAIB logos and many of the hopper livery packs too

I work for one of the civils contractors working on that area and in terms of structures, we are 12months into an 18month contract and have built 1 structure of note and have spent most of the time digging trial holes, taking boreholes etc so that the NR designer can start his designs. We still have very little in the way of finished designs from NR & their designer to go out and build and we need to do our bit before you can string up the knitting (well energise it anyway). 6 months ago, we were a year behind schedule so I think you can safely say it is now worse than that. It looks like we hit the ground in earnest this November and will be having a manic 2016 but don't expect any IEP on OHLE anywhere near Bath in 2016 or a good chunk of 2017.