|
When I got to the bottom of the bucket of chair screws, I found I was
one short, so I'll have to contact the railway where I bought the track
and get one more screw from them. The middle sleeper of the seven must
have had a different style of rail chair fitted, as the hole spacing was
out and didn't line up with my chairs. As a result, I had to do some
drilling to make new holes. That left a load of wood chippings on the
weed membrane, so I got the garden leaf blower out and blew it clean,
then packed all the tools away and took the latest update pictures. |
|||
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
June 8th The two shorter lengths of
rail needed the ends trimming square, before they could butt up against the
longer rail. As can be seen in the first picture, the ends were very
untidy. I picked the two straightest ends and took my angle grinder to
them. It took some time, but I got both cleaned up and square enough
that they should fit together well. The next small step was to get my
builder's line out and check the alignment of the rail chairs. I'd
roughly lined up the sleepers based on the chair mounting holes, but
once the chairs were fitted, I was able to get a much better alignment. |
|||
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
I then used some timber sitting in the chairs to make some final adjustments to the heights of the sleepers. June 9th The 9th was the big day! I wanted the rails fitted. Step 1 was to get my Dodge Weapons Carrier out of the garage and assemble the crane on the back. There was no way I was going to be able to carry the rails down the garden, but the Dodge would manage to get them almost all of the way with very little effort. Nylon ropes attached through bolt holes in the rail and connected the rail to the chain hoist on the Dodge crane. Another rope was tied to each end of the rail and was fastened to part of the crane frame inside the Dodge. This triangulated the rail to stop it from swinging around while I was driving. There's a video further down the page showing one trip down the garden in the Dodge. The rail was picked up from
the driveway, near the garage, reversed through a gap in the hedge onto
the lawn, then I swung around, heading backwards towards the play house
and level crossing gate. The playhouse limited how close I could get, so
once there, the rail was raised with the chain hoist, then the jib was
lowered, swinging the rail further back from the Dodge. It was then
lowered onto the sleeper wall, next to the railway. |
|||
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Once sitting on the sleeper wall, I lifted each end by hand, and placed a two inch diameter roller under the rail. The rollers were made from two offcuts of tent poles. This allowed me to roll the rail along the wall to where the trackbed was. Once aligned between the sleepers, one end was lifted by hand and turned 90 degrees. Another plank running up the railway sleepers, allowed me to then roll the rail towards the hedge. I was fitting the shorter sections of rail at the hedge end and the longer pieces at the playhouse end. It took thirty six minutes from hooking up the first piece of rail to the crane, to having it sitting in the rail chairs. The long view down the garden
shows four of my hobbies/interests in one shot. On the left, is the
trailer that I carried my R/C aircraft in. The light green building is
my observatory for astronomy. The railway is next and finally the Dodge
for my military vehicle interest. It also shows the long trip down the
garden - the reason I used the Dodge in the first place. |
|||
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
The whole process repeated - lift, drive, drop, roll and lift into place. At this point, the rails were just being dropped into the chairs, not properly fitted at this time. The longer rails took a little longer to rig for lifting, as only one end of those rails had a hole through. I got three rails fitted and then stopped for lunch. The last picture shows rail number four, sitting on the wall after lunch. |
|||
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
It was rolled into place along side the rail chairs and then each end lifted in turn to drop it into the chairs. After another long walk up the garden, I came back with a bucket of chair keys. These keys are hammered into the gap between the chair and rail. This is quite an old method of rail fixing. In the video to the right, you can see me hammering a key in. Only one was really tight and needed a little trimming off to fit. |
|||
 |
 |
||