Putting all the Halloween nonsense behind us, it was back to reality with a vengeance this weekend at Apedale. The closed season is all too short, and it is the key opportunity to carry out significant maintenance and renewals on the railway infrastructure. This weekend has seen a major project to re-rail a section of the main line alongside the Aurora North storage shed. The objective of the exercise was to generate a float of rails of the type used on the southern end of the railway; the concern has been that we had no spare such rails - so if one was found to be damaged, or cracked, then we were in potentially deep trouble. So, a team cracked on and changed the rails, which also allowed the fishplates to re-greased, rail gaps set correctly and preservative to be poured into sleeper fixing holes. It has to be said that it's always a slightly nervous time when there are huge holes in the railway, but at least we didn't have a large block in a black mac muttering threats about the Sleeper train being due in two hours time. As ever, get in touch here.
