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2011 PROGRESS UPDATES |
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5th January - visitors to the railway. |
 5th January - Peter Ladbroke prepares track bed |
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13th January - the annual pruning of almond trees produces a large quantity of logs and sticks which must all be cut up for firewood for next winter. |
13th January - after the pruning is done I can commence track bed preparation again. |
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2nd Feb - The blossom is coming out. |
14th Feb - The blossom is at it's best now. |
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15th Feb - I spotted this rather nice hoist, apparantly abandonded in the country. It would looik good on the ABR if I can find out who owns it. |
17th Feb - The PW wagon loaded ready for work. |
 17th Feb - Once round the 9m radius, the track bed changes gradually from 1:50 to level prior to entering the right hand point. |
 17th Feb - the penultimate curved section awaiting ballasting. |
 16th May - After a delay in track laying due to weather conditions and most of April in the UK, work continues at last. |
 16th May - The Hinowa self loading dumper, whilst not a digger, is great at scraping off the surface material of the track bed route. |
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 18th May - Work commences on the third 9m radius point to be constructed. The main components supplied by Comar White Ltd, consisting of stock rails, point blades, frog and templates. Getting to this stage is quite quick. I am using 50mm sq Dumfries Recycled Plastic for the sleeper section. |
 21st May - The long job is the fitting of the point blades which takes several hours of tedious grinding. After some 15 hours of work the point blades are fitted and I am checking clearances with a sample bogie. |
 2nd June - The third 9m radius point is placed in position. It took me over 20 hours to construct this. It is 2.6m long and requires two strong men to lift it. |
 2nd June - This shot shows how the track is gradually creeping alng the bottom boundary, furthest from the yard area. The spur to the right is the lower route whilst straight on will be direct to the terminus. |
 2nd June - This shot shows the track bed ahead has yet to be prepared. Although the dry stone wall seperating the upper & lower levels has been breached, there is still a large amount of soil to be removed in order to construct the 1:50 incline to the upper terminus. |
 2nd June - This is the extent of the full works train at the moment. The Lister Auto Trolley built by LA Services still continues to give excellent service and never fails to start first time. The Lister D Engine that provides the power is a 26DH spec, serial no: 192886. This was, I believe, assembled at Yorks's Garage at Berkeley Heath sometime between Feb & Sept 1945. Still running well at 66! |
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2nd June: Young Jack's big day out on the ABR. |
 2nd June: Marc with grandson Jack. |
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2nd June: Young Jack receiving instruction from the Chief Engineer on driving the Speeder. Serious expression! |
 2nd June: Ok Jack, so we can see you've got the hang of it, but how about keeping your eyes on the track ahead please! |
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23rd June: A rare overcast day in June! We had rain the following day. Ballast retaining boards fitted and ballasting in progress. |
 23rd June: The way ahead features further earth works, a 1.5% incline cutting. |
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9th Sept - At the end of a very hot summer, two ancient Cromar White coaches arrive from Rudd Hall in Yorkshire, having previously run at the Bolebroke Castle & Lakes Railway. |
 9th Sept - They are going to need quite a lot of TLC to get them back into good running order. |
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9th Sept - The haulier could not get close to the track so they had to be transferred into my smaller van and a special track made up for getting them onto the track. |
 9th Sept - The black plate was designed to 'force' the wheels into alignment as the angle of the van in relation to the track was not ideal! |
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