Hopefully you will recall that in my last diary work was going well on bridge 27 at Goathland. Well it still is with the new bridge deck almost ready for concreting.

As you can see in the photos above, taken on Monday 3rd February, the very complex reinforcing is just about complete with only minor adjustments needed. It always amazes me how a great big pile of individual reinforcing rods, all in different sizes, lengths and shape can ever be fitted onto a structure to a detailed drawing. It’s a very skilled job, often done in poor weather conditions.

The week before the permanent shutters for the ready mix concrete can be seen in the distance above and closer in the second image as the reinforcing was just starting to be laid. They are made in Filey of all places! They were cut to fit some of the awkward corners with the gaps sealed.

In the next image, the smaller sections of the old deck are seen waiting to be loaded up and taken to New Bridge for sale as scrap. Anyway that is enough about bridges because lots of other works are taking place on our railway.

In the photo above, Kerry, who is our new Lineside Conservation Officer funded by the National Heritage Lottery Fund, is seen at New Bridge with the National Park conservation apprentices. They are doing some very interesting work to improve our railway lineside.  They are planning to remove some vegetation from our retaining walls in the near future, so watch this space.

In the next photo, you can see the repaired Stumec lifting crane arms which have been superbly restored to full working condition by Kelvin at our Kirby Misperton site. They fit onto our Borail wagon and are used to lift 60ft rails onto and off the track. They were in poor condition not having been reliable for some years. After a check by our insurance inspector, they will be very busy. More about them in the next diaries.

Our S&T volunteers, lead by David and Ed, have been very busy laying concrete troughing in the Trout Farm area for the Pickering Re-signalling Scheme which is part of the works for the proposed carriage stable. The area between Trout Farm level crossing and bridge 8 is somewhat congested as seen below.

The new boundary fence has been erected with the various items for the signalling works laid out and bridge 8 in the background.

They say that the very artistic creation laid near bridge 8 is for a genuine reason not just to show they can lay troughing; who am I to disagree! The scale of their works is shown in the view below and you cannot even see the under-track crossings known as UTX’s  for obvious reasons. The next items will be the repositioning of the signals.

This bridge will be re-decked at the start of March 2020 using the smaller of the two Kirov cranes used at Goathland. The bigger one and several of the D B Cargo wagons left us last week for the next works somewhere on Network Rail. The plan is for this Kirov and the remaining wagons loaded with the scrap beams from bridge 27 to come to New Bridge. The old bridge parts will then be offloaded to a scrap merchant and the new concrete units for bridge 8 loaded onto the empty wagons for transporting down to bridge 8 – think it’s called logistics.

The new trackwork for the carriage stable is being made and prefabricated in Doncaster with the first turnout ready for inspection next week. So on Friday 14^th February I will be going to inspect it. Being Valentine’s Day, I suggested to my wife she may wish to come along also, surprisingly she declined, but I will have to show her the photos to prove what I was doing!

That’s all for now, with best wishes, 
Nigel Trotter, NYMR Civil Engineer.

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