What a lovely day we had at our running day on Saturday. Excellent weather, good company and some brilliant running of trains.
John, Keith, Brian, Richard and myself were there to set everything up. Later on we had Dave with his son Andrew, Stuart with Isaac. Ben joined us for a while, and in the afternoon we had John and Jane’s friends from the local Parkinson’s support group. So it was a busy day.
We had Chieftain, Isabel, Prospero and the Shay running with all our coaches
First trains over new concrete crossing
We were so busy on Wednesday finishing the new track that we had not done any preparation for this day so we were busy getting everything ready in the morning. Prospero and Isabel were steamed up about noon and we cautiously took them and Chieftain along the new track with lots of ‘advisors’ watching the progress. (all went very smoothly !) Dave had a drive of Chieftain and his son Andrew had a brief drive of Prospero. When Stuart and Isaac arrived, Stuart took lots of photos. Isaac had a drive on Prospero.
After lunch John’s visitors started to arrive so we buckled down to some serious driving as we gave them trips around the track.
The Shay trundling round with two of our visitors
From my point of view this was the best day I have ever had with Prospero. We ran for around three hours and Prospero only dropped below 80 psi once when the fire was a little low but I soon recovered it. At 3pm I took out the fire and drained the loco down but it would have carried on running if I had wanted to do that.
Around 3 pm we stopped for tea and some delicious cakes, the latter kindly provided by our visitors. It didn’t take us long to put everything away in the sheds. So all in all a very enjoyable day . (Peter)
Well we have been quite busy this month dodging the showers, nevertheless, excellent progess has been made on our extended layby loop. The track is all laid now,connected and laid more or less to level. We have put the top ballast layer on the outside and between the rails, but we have had to leave the side next to the timber edging until we have laid in the signalling and track sensor cables.
Track ballasting in progress
After much deliberation and measuring on site, we ordered 6 x100m drums which we hope will be enough ! The cables arrived on Saturday afternoon so we can now lay these in and complete the track ballast and final tamping and levelling, ready for running.
The tractor crossing was concreted on Wednesday too…While all this has been going on, the usual gardening work continues as nature don’t not stop things growing!!!!
The EVFR A1 concreting Gang!!!
Kevin made a visit too and it was good to see him out and about again.
