Following the visit last week of the Volker Rail Beaver 1900 Tamper surveying the line last week (photos above) we have had several visits this week from a Volker Rail 2004 and today we had the chance to really get up close and personal as it levelled the line at the back of our house. What a fascinating machine to see in action.
While I was attempting yet again to get a decent photo of the Polar Express, this time from further down the village on the opposite side of the line Chris stood alongside me and took a cracking video of it passing on her phone. A couple of my rather indifferent photos
Sorry Gormo, Try now I hadn't gone all the way through the process - it's changed since I last uploaded a video, so it was just saved as a draft
Since the railway reopened we have had the odd works train in the form of the Class 37 and the Class 14 has been up light engine but I have missed them each time. Sadly, this is what passes for Heritage Traction at the minute It suddenly feels like we have a min line at the bottom of the garden....
As a welcome change from the blessed Pacers which keep trundling past we had another 'proper' train on the branch yesterday (and presumably right through until Sunday) For once I manged to get photos of it out and back.
Today was a first for me on the branch, still loco hauled trains but todays loco was the Class 14. Which I have seen before but only on works trains not as a service loco. And I did manage photos of one of the return trips, which was more than I did the last two days with the Class 37 hauling the trains.
This is one line I have never visited , must try to get there one day. Would have liked to see the 37 . Tony.
Same here, but when you volunteer it probably makes it harder to visit else where unless your on holiday. looks a nice well kept line.
I've not been there for many years, Aysgarth station was still a guest house. Did the driver wave or was he giving you the bird Rob? Pete.
We had a bit of unusual activity on the branch this afternoon. We had a Ro/Rail crane fitted with a hedge trimmer operating on the line.
We have a company just down the road called Specialised Rail Services, SRS, that have loads of machinery like this, some that's obvious to what it's used for, some that is a complete mystery! Pete.
Probably the flail, a rotating metal rod in the machine head that has chain like items welded to it that literally chop through branches. Vicious machine and many farmers dislike them.
My back garden adjoins open fields, separated by a hawthorn hedge. Whilst the farmer uses tractor and flail mower to cut all the other hedges, in the 20 years since we bought our property, our shared hedge has never been cut. Enquiries revealed that a few years before we moved here, debris from the flail put someones greenhouse windows through, so now we know why he doesn't bother now. Flail mowers don't take any prisoners! Keith.
The same principle was used in WW2 as one of "Hobart's Funnies". A horizontal flail mounted on an extension on the front of a Churchill tank was used for mine clearance, pooh hoohed by the Yanks till they saw it working.