Many thought that the major Rocks by Rail rebuild and relaunch in 2013 would have seen the end of heavy rebuilding at the Museum but this has just inspired the volunteers to press ahead with completing the remaining jobs.
Attention has therefore turned to rebuilding the locomotive yard approaches and will see not only completion of water tower and servicing facilities but also the major track replacement programme in the yard throat as a precursor to the proposed and long awaited three road museum and workshop building.
This work will allow drainage, lighting and power points to be provided in the area to improve the operational capability of the working exhibits. It will also allow construction of a servicing and inspection pit and a wash down area to ease maintenance pressure.
The project started on Tuesday 19th February with a willing team of volunteers who started to lift the track in the area. By the evening all of the rail had been lifted together with the pointwork at L2, our reference for the second point in the loco yard.
Day two saw the sleepers lifted ready for removal and felling of the trees and hedge which had choked the drainage ditch to the rear of the site. This will be put into a culvert and levelled to allow a safe walking route to the rear of the site as well as the location of lighting posts to improve the working conditions in the area. The volunteers also laid a temporary ‘haul road’ into the site ready for the excavators which will level the site, remove poor draining clay and then dig drainage and service ditches before preparing the new track beds.
Day three allowed us to remove all of the sleepers from the site and it looks as if we can look forward to site development starting within a week of starting the project!
The photograph shows progress on day one with some track lifted and the welcome into service for our new Wickham platelayers trolley, recently acquired from a Sussex railway museum and after a repaint appropriately but unofficially named ‘Lavender’! See Wickham Blog for further detail.