The major winter engineering project at the Moseley Railway Trust site at Apedale is the conversion of what was, at one time a weighbridge, into an inspection pit. This project has taken on a certain degree of urgency with the realisation that the newly-commissioned Joffre steam loco needed a pit in order to be able to carry out the annual boiler exam. Hence no pit would lead to the loco being newly de-commissioned. It's been a big job so far, with a new retaining wall built, and then the land built up by backfilling behind the wall. A slight hitch was encountered just before Xmas when it was noticed that the existing sheet-piled wall alongside the weighbridge was bulging in places where bulges should not be. Although not on the scale of the
Chicken Curve and being completely unrelated to poultry, action was needed. The root cause was the land slipping into the pit, particularly ballast from an adjacent siding. As a first step to curing the problem, concrete sleepers have been placed and then pinned into place to reinforce the top of the bank. The next step is to reinforce the sheet piling, and hopefully that will solve the problem. As ever, get in touch
here.
