Ballast Laid on the Mountsorrel Railway

In mid September over 1000 tonnes of ballast were laid along the Mountsorrel Railway route.

Ballast are the small stones which sit around the track to hold it in place and help stop it moving when trains are running. First to go down is the base ballast which is a layer that the track is then laid on top of. This is followed by a similar amount of top ballast which goes on once the track is in place.

Lafarge have kindly donated and laid 500 tonnes of base ballast along the section on the line from Wood Lane to a point only 200m short of the end of of the line. This newly ballasted section is now ready for project volunteers to lay track over the coming months. The final 200m to Bond Lane will be base ballasted in a few weeks time.

At the GCR end of the line Lafarge have donated a further 500 tonnes of ballast which the GCR's permanent-way staff have dropped along our newly laid track. All 1000m of laid track is now top ballasted leaving this part of the line effectively complete. A machine called a tamper will align and pack the track leaving it fully ready for trains to run. At the moment we are fund raising to raise the £2,000 required to pay for the hire of the tamper, so please donate to help us reach this target if you can. Please send your donation cheques made payable to "DCRT" (David Clarke Railway Trust), with "Mountsorrel Railway" written on the back, to 112 Balmoral Road, Mountsorrel, Loughborough, LE12 7EW. If you are a UK tax payer please also download a gift aid form from the link on the left of this page and send it with your donation, this way the tax man will add a further 25% to your donation at no cost to you.

A massive thanks goes to Lafarge for their generosity in donating the ballast and also to the GCR for laying the ballast for us. This is a giant leap forward for the project which would not have been possible without their help. 

Please see the Youtube video below showing class 37255 laying the ballast.