Aln Valley Railway

Longhoughton Goods Yard - BS, DMS, TS, continuation of general tasks; extending the “”trolley line”", moving sleepers to aproximate positions, moving rail, wire brushing stock, painting stock, inspecting rail crane, sorting track components, checking over the permaquip, etc., Due to a combination of it being Brunton weekend and a few volunteers being on holiday, staffing levels were low, but this may have been just as well as the area outside the yard was very busy as there was a big job on today (and continuing till Monday) - the gate had been designated the access point to a Network Rail Plain Track Renewals work site so we arrived to find the normally quiet location crawling with Network Rail, Fastline, SES, and Railsafe Personnel and had to sign in even though we were actually working on our side! Baz and Dave S removed the two batteries that Dave had temporarily wired in to the quip earlier and cleaned up all the contacts and made some new leads, and selected a better earth point. The fuel tank was drained, and the fuel lines removed and a temporary fuel header tank rigged up. Once the batteries were reinstalled we went through all the pre start checks and tried to crank the engine - it fired up no problem but cut out as soon as the accelerator was released, we found this was because the hand throttle idle was set to low - once this was rectified we tried cranking and it fired and then sat idling quite happily. We then tried moving the machine, but with no joy. The engine was stopped and we tried operating the “”emergency”" hand pump to operate the turntable and the brakes. The turntable seems to operate OK but we have a feeling that the brakes are a little stiff through lack of use. The window apertures have been temporarily boarded up to try and help keep out the weather until we can get the re-glazed, plans are afoot… It certainly drew some glances from the Network Rail and Fastline crews in the area when we fired it up!The temporary mesh fence near our top gate was removed and agreement reached with the contractors for them to use the yard as parking was becoming tight. After some gentle pestering of the renewals team we were lucky in having a bit of spoil/ballast dropped in the yard – not a massive amount but as Tesco says “every little helps”. So thanks to Network Rail and their contractors.