Supporting the Worth Valley Railway Part Two

I have described the track renewals that took place below Ingrow Station in this years Civils week in part one of this blog, and promised to write about the other project that was carried out that week, which was to lift the track and ballast on bridge 19 to allow contractors to waterproof the arch to avoid the frost damage that had forced stone work out of the arch of bridge 18.

First of all you will have to cross my picket line of history to understand why these bridges were there in the first place, don’t worry my brazier of knowledge will keep you warm, and the placards will only inform.

As with a number of branch lines in this country, the Worth Valley project came about because of pressure from the local population for better transport links, and the mill owners  who could see the cost advantages of getting their coal and other raw materials in and their end products out more quickly by railway than by horse and cart. Money was raised locally to construct the branch as a private company, and  while the train services were operated by the Midland railway from  the day of opening, it was only some ten to fifteen years after it was completed that the Midland Railway bought the local owners out and took complete ownership of the line.

When first built, on leaving Oakworth the track curved to the left a quarter mile south of the station and was carried over a mill pond on a wooden viaduct and was routed around a hill to rejoin the present formation just south of Mytholmes tunnel. I don’t know the quality of the construction of the wooden viaduct, but it was found after that only just over twenty years of service it needed replacing, I think it was because of the greatly increased weight of locomotives that were needed to work the steeply graded line which this structure was not designed to carry. By 1890 the Midland Railway decided to scrap the wooden viaduct, and planned to replace it with three bridges followed by a deep cutting on a different route, however once they started digging out the cutting, the ground was found to be very unstable, made worse by uncovering an underground spring, and so instead they bored a short tunnel. One problem that is still with us to the present day is that they never built a wing wall at the north end of the tunnel to hold back the earth, so the clay slides down the sides of the cutting at the speed of a glacier with the result that every two or three years we have to use a JCB to clear the cess at the side of the track.

Just out of interest a bit of useless railway information, there is no set length before an over bridge becomes a tunnel, however railways differentiated  between the two by numbering bridges and naming tunnels.

The three bridges on the new deviation  numbered 17, and 18, have single arches, the first being steel and the second stone, and  the third, 19 is a three arch viaduct. All were built for double track that carry the railway over the same river, you might ask why the railway did not divert the river to save building so many bridges. The reason was that mill owners would defend to the death their right  to maintain the correct height of water levels at the mill pond, so their manufacturing ability would not be affected, and any rerouting of the river could affect these levels, so the  railway probably thought it was cheaper to employ stonemasons to build bridges, rather than barristers to fight the case to change the course of the river.

Right you are now through the picket line, I hope the smoke from the brazier of knowledge did not make your eyes water, and were not hit by any placards of information. We now fast forward around 120 years. Pause while we watch the leaves of a daily calendar fall away before our eyes, and the milometer  of Concorde flick round to show the passing years.   ( The main problem for me is at the age of 66  is this seems now to be the normal passage of time )

After the recent hard winters it was found that water penetration into the arch of bridge 18 had frozen, forcing stone blocks out of the underside of the arch into the river. While amazing  work has been carried out in-house including completely rebuilding a coach body that been lived as a house for over forty years, and reconstructing the wrecks of steam engines that have been recued from Barry, our expertise does not run to constructing scaffolding around  50 foot over a fast flowing river on the underside of a bridge and then mortaring the stones back into position, so we had to employ a specialized  contractor to carry out the repairs at great cost to the railway. To stop any further water penetration it was decided to waterproof the top of the arch of bridge 18 in April of this year.

Inspection of bridge 19 also showed there were signs of water penetration on these arches, fortunately without any damage to the stone work. To avoid the possibility of any future problems, we planned to carry out the waterproofing of the top of the three arches during this Septembers civils week. This meant that it also affected the track renewal  programme at Ingrow for the same week because with track removed on the viaduct the railway would be cut in half, with the result all the required equipment had be below the break in rails before the week started.

On the Sunday evening after the last service had passed, a large team of around 25 volunteers set to knocking out the metal keys that hold the bull head rails tightly in place in their chairs, undoing fishplates that allow the rail to expand and contract with the change of temperature, as well as joining  the rails together. once  the rails were crow barred out to side of the track, they were man handled clear of the bridge along with the sleepers to leave a clear  area for the JCB to remove the ballast from the top of the bridge the following morning.

Only a relatively small gang worked on this project, as once the ballast had been cleared from the top of the arches of the bridge, the contractors could start applying a waterproof sheeting to the top of the ash covering the arches. This was sandwiched by a membrane that protected the plastic from being pierced by the ballast. Once this had set they were able to back fill the arches with ballast. For their lunch time meal the catering crew made up various types of sandwiches and they took with them their own stove to provide themselves with hot drinks. They rode down to the site of work on a brakevan pushed by class 08 350 horse power shunting loco.

Joe Curtis  a Worth Valley volunteer who is also a civil engineer on Network Rail was in charge of the project, and he kindly supplied me with an itinerary of how the week progressed.

Monday
Brought excavator and dumper up the track from Oakworth station, cleared and leveled Mytholmes tip site. This was where the spoil from the 1890 construction had been dumped, and we used it to store excavated materials. The stone ballast and ash were carefully dug out in separate layers so that they could be reused when  we reinstated the track. Four volunteers on site.

Tuesday
Finished excavating all the materials off the bridge, and leveled the ash to give a cross fall into the cess and along the bridge to either end to ensure drainage. Four volunteers plus David who we have long used as a contractor on railway when we have need of a plant driver on site.

Wednesday The specialised contractor Waterseal who also did the same job on bridge 18 laid the waterproofing on the bridge. This consisted of three layers, first a layer of heavy duty terram * the trade name of  a fabric that is used to protect the waterproofing from sharp edges underneath, followed by a layer of heavy duty waterproofed material which was heat welded into a continuous sheet on site, and sealed to the bridge parapets. Topped off by another layer of terram to protect the waterproof sheet from above. Once this process was complete, we were able to start replacing the ash over the top of the waterproofed layer. Six volunteers, plus David, and four men from Waterseal on site.

Thursday
Placed remaining ash on to the bridge and then leveled and compacted the ash under the line of track. This was followed by the old ballast which was compacted in two layers to reduce settlement. Finally a start was made to place sleepers on the track bed with the excavator. Six volunteers plus David.

Friday
Finished placing the sleepers with the excavator, then lifted the rails back , the remaining ballast dropped into the four foot* with the excavator, and the track lifted  and a cant* created because it is on a curve. Plant equipment driven back down the track to Oakworth, this cleared the railway to allow a works train to drop new stone from a ballast wagon called a dogfish* on its return working from the Ingrow job in the evening. The section of line then reopened with a temporary speed restriction T.S.R. of 15 mph for the passenger trains the following morning. Ten volunteers plus David.

So what did this civil’s week cost? Plant and materials for relaying at Oakworth came in around £30,000, Bridge 19 worked out at around £20,000. So the weeks work cost the KWVR some £50,000. With around sixty men and women giving over a week of their time to ensure the success of these projects,  only underlines the fact that preserved railways would not exist without their efforts. I  am reminded of a quotation I read once and have always remembered, it went as follows ” Volunteers don’t get paid, not because they are worthless, its because they are priceless!”

A special Thank You goes to Alistair Falvey who provided the still images for this article.

* Terram is a registered trade mark for a fabric which as I understand it, works in the same way as a police stab proof vest.
* Cant. to cut down wear on the outer rail and enable trains to go safely at a faster speed around a curve, track is banked, so that the inner rail is lower than the outside rail.
*  Dogfish ballast hopper. Great Western Railways  employees started an unofficial system of naming all ballast wagons after fish, so they would know the types of wagons needed for a particular works train. The naming  system was adopted by the G.W.R. and later by British Railways .
* The term four foot is used to denote the area between the running rails.