Posted in News/interest Saturday, November 5th, 2011
A Brief History
Having been a member of the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway since 1970, I have always enjoyed the civil engineering week at the end of the summer daily service in the middle of September. Basically this week is set aside to carry out planned repairs or renewals to the track or line side infrastructure, i.e. bridges , tunnels, embankments and cuttings. Of course with a branch line that had been starved of much investment for last thirty years of its life as part of national railway system, meant it was in a pretty poor state of repair, and while we may have planned to carry out a certain project, failure on another part of the railway meant there was an element of “fire fighting” to keep the railway open. Regular maintenance is carried out on two weekends a month such as fish plate greasing, packing ballast under sleepers, and cutting back and burning line side foliage, however you are restricted in what can be carried out as there is a passenger service in operation.
Now over forty years since the reopening of the branch line as a preserved railway most of the track has been renewed and hundreds of tons of ballast spread along the track to replace the smoke box ash previously used. This caused poor drainage on the track, rotting wooden sleepers, and promoting weed growth. However the main problem with using smoke box ash as ballast is that it not strong enough to stop the track from moving under a train, allowing the rail ends to be battered as the joints dip where the rails are bolted to each other, leading to fractures in both rails and fishplates.
Photo: John Hoyle
Logistics
One of the areas of planning that is always underrated by any one not personally involved is logistics. This year the plan to replace around ten 60 foot lengths of track. To do this you will need to source twenty good second hand flat bottom rails which each weigh a ton, plus 240 pre used concrete sleepers weighing 2 and a half hundred weight a time. One thousand pandral clips, and plastic inserts, that fasten the rail to the sleeper, plus 500 rubber pads that go between the rail and the sleeper to reduce wear between the steel and the concrete. Having sourced that material from all over the country (the rails came from Eastleigh) the next task is to organize both plant and trained volunteers to offload the material as it arrives by road transferring it to railway wagons. Finally it then needs to be carried by train to the site of work and then placed by the side of track. I know that Arthur Walker a life long Worth Valley member, who worked on British Railways Civil Engineering Dept for some forty years spent many months with others on the Civil Engineering committee planning and traveling around the country sourcing the best quality materials at the lowest cost. By comparison on civils week when everything comes to fruition is a bit like building a giant piece of meccano, while the preparation and the construction are both vitally important, it’s the former that is carried out unseen.
Photo: John Hoyle
The finished product, just awaiting the ballast!
Feeding The Five Thousand
John Nicholson a life long Civil Department member started cooking breakfast for the workers over twenty years ago to try to keep costs down for those who were prepared to give their time to the railway. A side effect of this meant the savings in hours by having all the staff fed in one place, and were then available to be transported to the site of work, greatly increased the productivity of all involved over the week. Such was the success of this venture that we now use a kitchen car and an open mark one coach parked in front of the engine shed at Haworth to feed the crew. With over thirty full breakfasts being produced from 7 am in the morning each day, it needs a cook, servers and washers up to run the restaurant. After breakfast its then time to prepare sandwiches and soup to be taken to the site at lunchtime. The success of the operation was putting a strain on the system, so knowing my love of cooking John asked me if I would assist with producing the food.
In the run up to civils John spends around £500 purchasing food for the week and the volunteers pay a small amount for breakfast and lunch to defray the cost. To assist in reducing the charge, I approached Chris Brown to ask for help in subsidizing the cost of providing meals for the volunteers, and last year he kindly donated a £100 from his holiday company sunshine.co.uk .This year he again donated a £100 from one of his other companies modelrailways.co.uk with the result that once John had covered his costs, he was able to make the meals free of charge during the latter part of the week. Another supporter was Keelham Farm Shop near Queensbury who gave us a discount on their excellent bacon, eggs & vegetables.
Worth Valley Thank You Letter
(Click to enlarge)
Why do I feel this is important? Well if David Camerons concept of the “Big Society” is to make any sense, it must include the preserved railway sector. Just think about it for a moment, nearly every weekend throughout the year unpaid volunteers turn up to run nearly 1000 miles of railway across this country, they spend hours of their own time, maintaining track, rebuilding locomotives and rolling stock, as well as staffing the trains and stations. All this would not be possible with out their time, commitment & effort. Long may they continue.
The photos have been kindly supplied by John Hoyle who throughout his railway career has been known by his nickname of Olive. I will leave you to work out why!
There was a second fairly urgent repair carried out during the same week that had not originally been planned, I did write in the early part of this blog about “fire fighting” which may have given you the impression that staff are running from crisis to crisis to keep the railway open. This is certainly not the case, but when you are dealing with an infrastructure that at it youngest is well over a hundred years old, problems will crop up from time to time. In this case it was the stone built bridges between Oakworth & Haworth, a combination of water penetration and the recent hard winters had resulted in the frost and ice forcing out the stone work on the underside of the arches on one bridge and the possibility of it happening to another, so the objective was to remove the track and ballast and waterproof the top of the arch.
I will write and include photos of this project in my next blog.
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