Other Departmental

The midweek gang now meet almost every week on a Thursday. Besides the yard clearing, they were also kept busy with continuing the resleepering work up the line from Oakworth crossing; dropping ballast on the recently (1-3 years) re-laid track between GN straight and Ingrow; and finally clearing the drains at Oxenhope. Given the weather this is a job that must be kept on top of!
This leads us into July which at the moment looks to be another washout. Fingers crossed the flood warnings for this weekend are wrong!
James Barlow - Civil Dept Volunteer

July/August Update
Well I’m glad to say the wet summer has left us surprisingly unscathed, and since the last update the weather has certainly improved!
Every weekend and Thursday during July, we have been busy up and down the line. The first weekend in July, the 7th and 8th, continued the spot resleepering work south of Oakworth Level Crossing. This job has involved many man hours and was finally completed during the third weekend of July.
Unusually, this month our civil department meeting was held outside of a working weekend, this gave us an opportunity to do a smaller job as some of us would be travelling for the meeting anyway. One of the small jobs was to continue erecting fences alongside bridges on Mytholmes Curve.
On the Saturday of the third weekend in July the works train was utilised to drop and spread ballast north of Ingrow West and also to collect old sleepers from recent track renewals before moving them to our yard at Oakworth. Sunday was used to complete the spot resleepering job mentioned above. During the fourth weekend the works train was utilised again to drop materials along the line for use during future projects, including an upcoming resleepering job at Bakers Curve.
The midweek gang were also kept very busy during July; various jobs were undertaken including the receiving of materials at Ingrow yard, the erection of fences along Mytholmes Curve. Also the on-going task of repairing the dry stone boundary walls along the line, being dry stone walls they do have a tendency to fall over every now and again!

August began with a weekend using Kango hammers to repair the track alongside Haworth yard, the track here had started to ride poorly due to twisting (this is where one side of the track is lower than the other causing the train to roll slightly). The repair was performed by vibrating stone under the sleepers, where required, to bring the track back to the required level on both rails. This gives me an opportunity to mention another vital task undertaken by the department, track walking, which was also undertaken this weekend. Track walking is an essential task undertaken by the department; every weekend, and once a week during midweek running, a track inspection is carried out by qualified members of the department. The inspections continually monitor the condition of the infrastructure on the line and allow alterations to our work programme. Small maintenance tasks are carried out during the inspection such as; tightening/loosening fishplates; and knocking in keys which have fallen out.
In the following weeks, the sun has been shining (mostly) and we are fast approaching one of the most important parts of the year for the civil department. Civil Week will soon be upon us and preparations are well underway. For those of you who don’t know what Civil Week is about, it is a week long program of work undertaken by the department using volunteers from the entire railway. This planned week allows us to call upon an extremely large work force to complete several large jobs in parallel with each other. This has included track renewal, bridge repairs and drainage renewals in the past. Over the coming weeks we shall spend a lot of time preparing for this event, spreading ballast north of Ingrow, moving materials up and down the line and also prefabricating certain materials off site to make renewals easier.
So there it is a, a busy month for the department and an even busier one is approaching, I hope the next update brings news of a very successful Civil Week!
If any of you are interested in what we do to maintain the railway do not hesitate to contact the railway about volunteering here!

Civil Week 2012

So Civil Week 2012 is over, with only a small hiccup on the Saturday morning, apologies to anyone inconvenienced by the late handover of Damems Loop! This year’s weather held up fairly well with only some smaller showers on the Wednesday, so managing quite well to dodge this summer’s many downfalls!

This year’s Civil Week consisted of five jobs:

• Heavy spot resleepering on Bakers Curve.
• Replacement of a set of points at the north end of Damems Loop.
• Clearing out sediment from Bridgehouse Beck underneath bridge 27.
• Repairs and upgrades to drains south of Oakworth level crossing.
• Welding a temporary rail joint on Mytholmes Curve thus removing speed restriction.

To many of us, these changes will go unnoticed while riding around on the railway however, this serves as a reminder of how much hard work and effort goes into the maintenance of just a small branch line!

Bakers Curve

For those of you who do not know, Bakers Curve is located between Haworth and Oakworth on the Haworth side of Mytholmes Tunnel. Many of the sleepers here had deteriorated, so the decision was taken to remove the rails and replace all sleepers that were not in a good condition while we had a possession. As you can read in previous months updates, similar work was completed above Oakworth level crossing and took significantly longer. This is because we have to work under traffic and plan around any train movements on the day, particularly difficult with a two train Sunday service! The sleepers replaced were mostly softwood sleepers, which loose strength far faster than the hardwood sleepers used to replace them, so the area should be strong for years to come. About 80 sleepers were replaced in total, meaning most of the sleepers in the area have now been renewed. While the rails are removed it gives us an ideal opportunity to also renew any rail chairs and associated screws and pads. You can see in the picture where the new chairs are being fitted, they are the bright rusty ones. The other chairs will be reused ones that are still in a good condition. The new chairs fitted to the inside rail are all check chairs, this is for a future project that involves fitting a check rail to Bakers Curve. Generally check rails are used on sharp curves as they keep the wheels from riding over the top of the rail, you can see them on the curves when you come out of Keighley station heading towards Oxenhope. A gang of between 10 and 30 tackled the job over the week, by the end of Thursday only keying and plating was left to do and this was promptly finished Friday morning, with the gang then rushing off to the Damems job in the afternoon. 

Damems Loop North Points Renewal

Damems Loop, if you haven’t guessed, is the loop halfway up the line where trains pass each other. The main line points on the northern end of the loop (towards Keighley) had become worn. The decision was taken to do a full renewal; we had recently received some very good materials from a company in Eastleigh that was closing down. These were put to good use here. Included in the renewal were all the surrounding rails and chairs, while also replacing any poor softwood sleepers with solid hardwood ones. This attitude to renewals requires more work at the time but gives a much longer lasting section of track, which ultimately reduces pressure on the department in the long term. The crossing itself was replacing with a cast steel crossing. A relatively modern piece of equipment and a first for us, I also imagine it is something very rare in the heritage railways in general! Of course I am willing to be proved wrong on that. With only one member of the signalling department available during Civil Week that work provided very tricky, and this is how the delay on Saturday morning came about.  This job was also slightly slower than our usual jobs as it required the rare use of the railways crane, particularly for the large cast steel crossing, which as you can imagine took quite a lot of lifting! This was certainly the most complex job undertaken this year as taking a set of points apart also involves all the connections to the signal box. This has to be done carefully as if done wrong, they don’t work and you can guess the rest… 

Although finished late Saturday morning, the job was finished in entirety and the points will be strong for years to come. Next time you travel towards Keighley out of Damems loop see if it feels smoother, I have found the best way to test this is with a drink on the table!

Here are some pictures of the completed crossing taken while we were putting all the excavated ballast back on the 20^th October.  

Bridgehouse Beck Clearing

Bridge 27 is a double track bridge at the south end of Haworth yard, which carries the railway over Bridgehouse beck. The bridge has two spans, the beck wants to flow through the span closest to Haworth yard. Previous attempts to encourage the beck to flow equally through the two spans have not been entirely successful. This has led to a much slower flow through the other span, which in turn causes the channel to silt up reducing the capacity of the beck under the bridge. In the past this has led to the beck coming over the bridge and flowing into Haworth yard and into the sheds during flooding, hopefully having completed this job and increased the...