Early December, Lighting testing.

 Lighting testing, 

For the short time that we were able to run trains for this Christmas period, Maintenance checks was carried out on all signal lighting circuits, before the Christmas running season began. It sounds an unimportant job, but when that light is the only way for the driver to know when it is safe to go or must stop. Then they are quite important in the winter mouths with low light levels and snow conditions. Our signal lights are well above the standard that is required for signal lighting and are all LED lit, I believe that the Aviemore South bound signal light can be seen from 3/4 a mile away! So more than adequate for braking distances.

Selection on Boat of Garten signals being checked all with LED lights.

Out with the old and in with the new, wiring!

 2nd January,

Out with the old and in with the new! 

That’s the wiring I am on about. Things have slowed down with the Boat Of Garten North project I am afraid. The next steps are requiring a lot of drawings and off site work to be done first. The likes of interlocking requires to be planed and drawn up and discussed before work can be commenced. So for the time being with current government restrictions and our own restrictions this will need to wait until it is deemed safe to travel and Spey lodge is available for use by our members. In the meantime, work on creating a cable route, to hide all the unsightly cables can be created. Work has also started on the mounting of the power supplies. The power supplies are for feeding out to the line side locations, to feed track circuits and indication circuits. Signal lightning supplies and the lever locks under the signal box. This has been slowed down as it was not known that all the 1960 BR cabling was still in place. This all had to be removed before removing and repurposing the old wood cable routes to suite what we are requiring. All very fun, dusty and dirty work!

The old BR wiring being removed, in surprisingly good condition for its age.

New power supplies transform boxes been placed, transformers are not in the boxes yet that’s another days job. The New, Old cable routing going into place to carry the power supply cables, and round to the lever locks attached to the lever frame and up through the floor to the relay cabinet on the operating floor.