Another day workin' on the railway...

Got in an hour or so of track clearance on the garden railway this evening. The line is now open from Devlins all the way down the hill to Bottom Points. The track is in remarkably good condition, considering the neglect the railway has suffered over the last six years. Not so the timber culvert about one third of the way up the middle road, it has disappeared completely! The wood has rotted away and will need to be replaced, but it is cosmetic only, the track is strong enough to span the gap so I can still run trains. (It does serve to allow water to drain under the railway, so it is cosmetic only in the sense that it doesn't support the track!)

When it had got too dark to work I spent a couple of minutes running No.1 and a few wagons up and down the hill. No.1 is running beautifully after her 'overhaul' last week. The old battery pack had deteriorated to the extent that I was lucky to get one trip up the hill out of her, but the new one is very strong, she is still running on the charge she got last weekend!

It was too dark to photograph, so I have used a photo I took at Bottom Points last year to illustrate what the location looks like now.

No.1 and a works train at Bottom Points on 4 July 2010 during last year's attempt to get the RVR operational again.

The Rurr Valley revival - take 2.

Last year I got about half the garden railway operational again after five years of neglect and three floods that damaged the two large bridges, cutting the main line to Underpool. Unfortunately, I did not do any further work between last October and a couple of days ago, for various reasons. However, the dispatch of the October issue of AMRM to the printer at the end of August (and the end of the soccer season!) gave me a little time for modelling. The first thing I did was to get No.1 running again, in order to review a MyLocoSound large scale sound chip (you can read the review in the December issue of AMRM). No.1 needed a new battery pack and speaker, and once I had done that and fitted and tested the new sound card, I decided it was about time I had some railway to run it on!

I started at the top station last week and cleared a short section, but didn't get another chance to get down in the garden till yesterday.

No.1 and the ballast wagon are standing on the section I cleared last week. The other side of the level crossing shows the results of a year's neglect. That is what the rest of the railway looks like!

Half an hour later and the line was clear through the station. There is a lot of 'scouring' of the ballast, so when I get the entire line clear there will be a lot of reballasting!

 No.1 stands at the Devlins platform.

An hour's work saw the track cleared down to through the cutting to the site where 'Top Points' were back in the days of the zig-zag, which is about a third of the way down the hill to Possum Point. Hopefully, trains will be running between Devlins and Possum point before long, but I will have to build two new bridges before trains can run to Underpool again.