Over the next week or so there will be a short series of website updates detailing our progress and how it happened. Excitingly we still have enough rail available to the project to lay a further 450m of track! What we don't have though is sleepers and other fittings to go with it, which we need to raise a further £16,000 to secure. Our attention now turns to fundraising in earnest to pay for the extra materials we need. If we can lay the rest of the rail we have, then we won't be far short of having track laid along half of the branch, well over half a mile of running line!
Please consider donating to our appeal fund to help track extend further. You can donate online, or send your cheque made out to the David Clarke Railway Trust, with "Mountsorrel Railway" written on the back of your cheque, to 112 Balmoral Road, Mountsorrel, Loughborough, LE12 7EW. If you are a UK taxpayer please download our gift aid form and send it with your donation - that way the tax man will top up your donation by an additional 25%.
March 3rd 2011
The Great Central Railway brings a rail wagon to the branch with enough rails to lay 200m of track. Some of the rail is of poor quality and needs to be sorted through to work out what rails can be reused. The train also contains two wagons loaded with 210 chaired timber sleepers.
March 5th 2011
Project volunteers set to work unloading the sleepers from the wagons. These were carefully unloaded by hand one at a time. Fortunately we have a good strong team and we managed to unload all 210 in only a day! Not only this but the first hundred sleepers were laid out along the branch. The picture shows sleepers laid to the side of the branch, these were to form the base of our rail stacks.
March 12th 2011
During the week GCR staff had removed our two empty sleeper wagons and moved the rail wagon up to the end of the existing branch track. At this location though we couldn't easily unload rail because the branch signal was in the way. Our priority was to lay a further panel of track so the rail wagon could be brought forward and unloaded properly. Selecting two good rails wasn't as easy as it sounds as we had a mix of different lengths and some of the rail ends needed re-cutting and drilling.
An unloading ramp was built at the side of the wagon using old sleepers, and rails were slowly unloaded one at a time until we found an ideal pair. We ended up having to unload 12 rails before the ideal pair were found. These all had to be dragged forward onto our new rail stack. Hard work but we got there in the end.
As soon as we had a good pair of rails these were lifted by hand using rail tongs into the sleeper chairs. By the end of the session we had laid the first panel of this track laying phase!
All work was undertaken under the skilful supervision of our track laying expert Tim Oaks.
March 19th 2011
Our Tuesday group had taken on the task of sorting components and getting everything ready for the Saturday track laying sessions, which greatly speeded our progress.
With the rail wagon now moved forward and level with the stack it was far easier and quicker to unload the rails. These were carefully slid off the wagon one at a time. If the ends were good they were dragged forward onto the "good" stack otherwise they were left on the "need some work" stack.
Being on a curve at this point, ideally we were looking for pairs of rails where the inside rail was four inches shorter than the outside. That way we could lay them without cutting and redrilling.
By the end of the session we had laid our second panel.
March 26th 2011
The rest of the rail was unloaded from the wagon meaning that the empty rail wagon could be moved back to allow our second track panel to be plated up and keyed. We spent some considerable time slewing the first two panels into the curve. This was made difficult by the track continuing to move where we didn't want it to!
April 2nd 2011
With all the rail unloaded, sorted and stacked, we had found enough rail of the correct lengths to lay more track. We had a strong team and pushed on to lay four additional panels during the day. This is some 240 feet of track! This used up all of the remaining sleepers we had laid out so far. The rail stack was getting further behind us as well, so it would be doubtful that we would be able to maintain this rate of progress as the head of steel progressed.
More details to follow in the next update!
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