A particularly physical job recently undertaken by a team of Moseley Railway Trust volunteers has been the re-grading of part of the field railway. This section, leading to an area christened Loos Loop (after the place in France), suffered from the gradient being far from ideal. In essence, the track dropped steeply in few places, and then levelled - there was not a consistent gradient. A careful level survey was taken on a pleasant summer's evening in 2017, and then a fair bit of spreadsheet work resulted in the calculation of an "idealised" gradient profile. On the Big Railway, this is the point at which laser-guided earthmovers would be brought in. Our team of earth movers weren't laser-guided, more tea and coffee-guided. But despite that, they have done a fine job. The railway is now bedding in for a while before final lifting and packing. Time will tell if the traincrews notice a difference, but the spreadsheet says it's OK, so it must be.
Monday, 22 January 2018
Re-grading Loos Loop
A particularly physical job recently undertaken by a team of Moseley Railway Trust volunteers has been the re-grading of part of the field railway. This section, leading to an area christened Loos Loop (after the place in France), suffered from the gradient being far from ideal. In essence, the track dropped steeply in few places, and then levelled - there was not a consistent gradient. A careful level survey was taken on a pleasant summer's evening in 2017, and then a fair bit of spreadsheet work resulted in the calculation of an "idealised" gradient profile. On the Big Railway, this is the point at which laser-guided earthmovers would be brought in. Our team of earth movers weren't laser-guided, more tea and coffee-guided. But despite that, they have done a fine job. The railway is now bedding in for a while before final lifting and packing. Time will tell if the traincrews notice a difference, but the spreadsheet says it's OK, so it must be.
