by Eric Jeyes
Here are three photographs taken in the mid-to-late 1980s by a member of the track relaying team when the northbound fast line on the approach to Grantham station from the south was being completely renewed .
One of the new Long Welded Rails is running alongside the job (bottom centre to top left); it was unloaded in a Prep Shift some weeks earlier. The other new rail is laid along the sleeper ends of the Up Fast, that's the track with the train sat on it.
The new bottom ballast is being unloaded from the Redlands Self Discharge Train (Redlands SDT).
The Dozer with Laser Level Controls then pushes and spreads the new ballast across the formation.
Following the operation shown in the above photographs the ballast would be consolidated with a Triple-Plate Vibrator, then sleepers laid and spaced, rails installed and clipped up.
The Redlands Self Discharge Train was built initially to take granite ballast from Mountsorrel Quarry for unloading at stockpiles in railway yards around the country.
Then, when the ballast was needed for engineering works, it would have been loaded from a stockpile into open wagons by excavators.
On site, it would have been unloaded from the open wagons onto the excavated formation by excavators, and roughly spread, then levelled and spread by a Side-Tipping Drott or a Dozer. The introduction of Laser Level Controls fixed to the Dozer blades made the use of dozers the method of choice.
Someone then had one of those moments of inspiration, and thought of using the Redlands SDT to take bottom ballast straight to site, allowing much quicker, and much more controllable, placement and levelling of the bottom ballast.
Finally, here's a photograph which shows the site in 1959 taken from within a few yards of the first picture, which is included again for comparison.
This and other photographs are available from Rail-Online: left click on the image.
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Another very interesting article on Railway Operating Procedure.
Without doubt, but with little credit on Railway functions, track and signals have to be maintained to a standard to convey heavy freight and Express services.
As a Driver working a freight service down Stoke Bank I felt a lurch to the left near to Little Bytham. Same again the next day, so I reported this, knowing that 4hrs later trains would be travelling over this track at twice my speed. It was interesting to get an explanation. Obviously the rail is long welded and an OTM (On-Track Machine) is programmed to cover a certain distance. So my lurch was where the machine's programme finished.
Mention of OTMs, at one time these machines had to have a BR Driver as a Conductor. One night 3 of us at Peterborough were booked to take Machines to a Possession from Tallington to Stoke (Up Slow) with instruction not to pass over Greatford CCTV Crossing without permission (Wrong Direction move). It is a long story but the same applied on return. However my machine got distanced from the one in front and we ran into the back of it (wheel slide). The cess side buffer broke off and I hit the deck. At a subsequent enquiry I was cleared of any blame but gained a nickname!
Hello Ray. Thank you for contributing your experiences to this page. It's very rewarding to receive such responses.
John Clayson