I’ve returned to Parbold today to get more shots of the work now that things have progressed. I had the same trouble getting out here as yesterday. The ‘direct’ bus is a figment of Northern’s imagination. I still had to change at Burscough Bridge to the same timetable as yesterday. This time I sat on the station to wait and ended up directing several rail passengers to the bus stop. There’s no posters on the station telling them were it is, only one saying the the line’s closed and buses are running instead. I’m amazed at the number of people who don’t know there’s a blockade on this week and still turn up expecting a train.
Anways, here’s a few pictures from today.
The life of an engine driver on a possession. More time’s spent with your feet up than actually driving! It’s a dull job.Overnight the old Up (Wigan bound) line has been stripped out and the formation levelled with fresh ballast which is being unloaded from the train behind. These remote controlled Wackers (yes, they’re really called that) are used to compact and level the ballast before sleepers are laid on top. Meanwhile, other RRVs are unloading more ballast. The whole thing has to be tightly choreographed as the RRVs can’t lay new sleepers until the ballast train is out of the way. On this job the original rails and sleepers are being relaid as they’re not that old and still have plenty of life left in them. The RRV on the left brings them in from a stockpile whilst the machine on the right places them into position. This RRv picks up six sleepers at a time and places them into position.Once in roughly the right position (see the yellow line spayed on the ballast behind) a measurement is taken from the opposite track to ensure they’re in exactly the right alignment.
Having left the site for an hour or so to download these pictures I returned to find that the teams had made rapid progress.
There was rapid progress on the Up (Wigan bound) line where rails had already been reinstated along part of the line, ready for being clipped into place. This clever little machine lifts the sleepers up and clips them onto the rails – several at a time, a job that once used to be done manually. An RRV moved stacks of sleepers that had been stored on the track in the station platform. This is one of the reasons the level crossing has been closed throughout the work. Space is limited and the crossing has also been an access point to allow equipment to be taken away or brought onto the worksite. A COSS (Controller Of Site Safety) clips sleepers to the RRV’s boom, ready to be lifted and moved to site. Wonder what all those paper things are? They’re tickets to say that all the chains have been inspected and are safe to use for the job.
Rather than wait hours for the bus, I walked back to Burscough Bridge along the Leeds and Liverpool canal. It look around 90 mins but it allowed me to get a shot of these engineers trains parked up West of Parbold out of the way, but next to a level crossing so that the engine drivers could be relieved after the end of their shifts.
Mind you, that wasn’t all I saw en-route. There was also this flotilla of young swans on the canal.
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Paul Bigland 