By twenty past one in the
afternoon, all four rails were fitted and I was starting to hammer in
the chair keys. This didn't take too long, but once all the rails were
secure, the short rail nearest the crossing gate, was sitting a bit low.
Off to the workshop again, to cut some wooden packers to go under the
sleepers. I levelled the ground as best as I could, but there were still
some undulations. The sleepers and now with rail too, were very heavy,
so to lift them to get the packers under the sleeper, I made another
trip up the garden for my trolley jack. I seemed to spent a lot of the
day, walking up and down the garden for stuff! The jack allowed me to
lift the rail and sleeper and try the packer in place. A couple of
sleepers needed some packers and they all needed a little trimming to
fit. With the rails all sitting flush, I stopped to clear up the tools
and take some pictures.
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It was a good job I was working quickly, as at 14:55 hours, I saw and
photographed the first train; albeit, it was N scale!!! This could well
be the first train in the village since Dr Beeching's axe fell on the
British railways.
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Fitting the second gatepost
should be next, along with a shopping trip for ballast for the track and
topsoil for the new lawn. |
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June 10th
With the paint on the gate
mount fully dry, it was time to get it fitted. The concrete footing was
drilled and four rawle bolts hold the mount down. Since the post was
quite a tight fit, I covered the bottom of the post and inside the mount
with Vaseline, so it would slide in without damaging the paint on
either. The post was then held into the mount with twelve large screws.
Once that was fixed in place, the gate was lifted to its correct
position and the bolt hole drilled and painted. It was left to dry a
while before the gate was closed and the bolt slotted into the hole. The
mount bolts and post screws were then painted over in black Hammerite. I
finished the work with an arty photo, between two bushes.
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I can see this location featuring quite a bit in my future astronomy
photos. As the day drew to a close, I was indoors, but noticed the
sunset colours on the wall inside the lounge.
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I grabbed my phone and
went out to see what I could capture. There is of course, still a lot of
clutter around the site. The tree trunks are just holding down the weed
membrane covering the new lawn area until I start work on that and
there's no ballast down yet, but after taking these sunset pictures, I
thought the area would be great for some widefield star shots or star
trail photos too.
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June 11th
On the morning of the 11th, I
had a trip out to B&Q for some timber. I wanted to form an edge to the
trackbed to contain the ballast and keep the soil embankment in place. The
easiest way seemed to be a 4 inch tall timber wall, with stakes to hold it
in place. The wall is made from three strips and the centre one
needed cutting to length. All three strips were painted along the bottom
edges in bitumen and left to dry for a short time. Once dry enough to
handle, I started fixing them in place. At the hedge end, the timber was
attached to the sleeper wall next to the future hedge-side path.
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At
the front, the timber was screwed to the timber wall. Along the length,
I hammered in several stakes and the timbers were screwed to these
stakes. After that, the rest of the timber was painted in bitumen. Once
dry, the weed membrane will be wrapped over the top of the timber edge
and will probably be stapled to the wood, each side. The ballast can
then be filled up to the timber on the track side and the earth bank can
be back filled to the other side. |
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June 12th
On the 12th, I got the weed
membrane glued and stapled to the front sleeper wall and wrapped over the
edge strip that I fitted yesterday. There was also an additional patch of
weed membrane to glue down at the back, where the original 5mtr square
sheet wasn't long enough. Then came the question of ballast. After taking
some measurements, I sat down yesterday with an online gravel calculator.
Even allowing for the space taken by the sleepers, it suggested six 850Kg
bulk bags to fill the area. Decorative gravel starts at £100 per bulk
bag, so spending £600 on rock was more than I was prepared to spend. I
then contemplated filling most of the area with river gravel, then just
adding a final layer of decorative gravel on top. The river gravel was
only £50 per pulk bag and much more affordable.
I had around a quarter of a bag
of river gravel, left over from the soakaway behind the sleeper wall. I
decided to spread this out and get a feel for how far and how deep it
would cover. This suggested the six bulk bag estimate was probably pretty
close. So this morning, I went to the supplier and ordered five bulk bags
of the river gravel. That won't be delivered until next Wednesday. Once
the five bags have been spread out over the track bed, I can decide
whether one decorative bulk bag is enough, or whether to add one more
river gravel layer before the decorative stone. With that order, I'll
probably add two bulk bags of top soil for the new lawn.
So for now, the track area is
paused. I still need to move some of the existing earth around on the lawn
area, to level it off more, so I'll probably focus on that for the next
week.
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