The Dovecote Light Railway Project
By Mark Thatcher
Welcome to the Week 2 Instalment:
Well it seems an awful long time since we started this project, but in reality it’s only a week ago. The other reality is that work has beckoned once again and after all, it pays for this hobby. However, not withstanding this, significant progress has still been made.
Day Four
We were able to complete the landscaping between the bridge and Tramways station. This mainly involved a visit to the local garden centre, where 30 or so alpine plants were sourced. These will survive pretty much anywhere and will all grow to give good ground cover, which helps to hold the new top-soil together. I also, rather coincidentally, located some lovely Cotswold stone, which not only stopped up a rather unnecessary rabbit run on the far side of the pond – but blends in perfectly with Stuart Currie’s fine bespoke Cotswold stone pottery buildings.
"The rocks form a sort of mini-mountain-scape"
In fact we were able to set his splendid barn in place too. The rocks form a sort of mini-mountain-scape, and his barn sits on a Cotswold stone slab. Remove the barn and we now have a rockery and a stepping-stone down to the bridge area for that all too inevitable track maintenance. The whole lot was topped off with bark chippings, which hopefully will mean less weeding in the long run.
Day Five
Two real bonuses happened today. Firstly, the man with the JCB arrived and in one hour had in-filled our wooden shuttering with 8 tons of top-soil “borrowed” from the far side of our 2 acre plot. We worked out there is about 15 regular wheel barrow loads of earth per one JCB scoop, so in an hour we moved around 120 barrow loads of soil which would have taken a month of Sundays to shift by hand. The other bit of good fortune was my best chum’s Mum & Dad called in to collect some of his stuff – and were so impressed with what we had achieved, they levelled all the top-soil off in a couple of hours – so if I have a free day this coming weekend, it may be that more track can be laid.
"we are pitfully short of points"
Therein lies a problem. Firstly, when JCB man came we had to clear our old railway from it’s present site – simply loosely laid on our car parking area. So we no longer have a loop of track to run anything on. Therefore, there is even more impetus to get this line up and running. More so, when cataloguing the track we do hold in stock, we noted we are pitifully short of points. This is not helped by the worldwide shortage of LGB track as the company has been going through significant changes since the start of the year. We really need 4 more radius 3 points at £50 each and ideally 6 larger radius 5 points at £100 each. That is quite a financial ask as we have already spent £400 or so on the civil engineering. But our motto is “do it once and do it well” so a call to Glendale Junction has been made to see if even they may be able to get stock – we’ll worry about paying for it later!
Day Six
Oh well, it’s raining and real work has really got in the way – plus the ramblers have all ready started to trample across the new railway – not just one but five of them. They seem to get everywhere these days, and why they need a silly hat, oversized socks, boots costing £300 and just one ski pole to traverse terrain that us mere mortals cover on our way to work beats me.
"Too wet to dig"
Now that I have alienated myself from the National Right-of-Way-Across-Anywhere Heritage, back to the railway. Too wet to dig, so a cathartic trip to Glendale Junction to buy 5 x radius five points and a bunch of curves, plus the aforementioned figures which were in the cheap bin. It’s looking busy over the weekend, so that might be it for this week.
Day Seven
Dovecote to Tramways Station is now Open!
"just in time to run an engineering service"
It all started stupidly early – at about 4 o’clock this morning. I could not sleep so got up and decided as the line broadly goes around a pond, we needed a jetty – so I made one. It was in situ by lunchtime! The morning provided ghastly weather so I made good with the jetty. But in the afternoon things really brightened up, so back to track laying, utilising some of those lovely radius 5 points and curves I bought yesterday. I really love them, their sweeping angles are just right. I know they are not cheap but I am now resolved to ONLY use them. So all of my radius 2 & 3 track is up for grabs… any takers? To cut a long blog short, thanks to the earth-moving equipment pressed into service earlier in the week, within a space of only five hours I was able to continue the track and lay the passing loop and curves either end of Dovecote station, and place the station itself – just in time to run an engineering service in the fading light with a glass of wine in my hand. How very quaint. It its great to see the main station in place – it really fires me up to keep on going
Day Eight
Finally I found some gravel of the right size to ballast the line with – it’s the stuff gardeners mix with soil to provide a gritty base for plants. It’s quite red, but that contrasts really well with the Cotswold stone of the buildings. We also had a chance to run our first radio-controlled live steamer. We chose our heaviest and oldest loco for this task – a LocoBox Garrett which will practically glue itself to the tracks! It performed admirably. There’s nothing better than seeing real steam wafting over the pond. There have been a couple of slight disasters though. One of the boats has sunk and has been rescued – and one of the ramblers has been half-inched… probably by a rabbit thinking it was food, or maybe I have really upset the rambling fraternity! More next week – although I have no free days until the weekend, so don’t hold your breath.
To Read more click the Week Three link.
