Last week, it was our Class 14 ‘Teddy Bear’ D9526 that was in the spotlight, but this week, our Class 33 ‘Crompton’ D6566 has reclaimed the top spot after having an ‘A’ exam performed at Westridge Shed, Bishops Lydeard, last weekend. This was to prepare her for duty on the ballast trains that have been running from Williton to various places along the line, delivering ballast as required by the Infrastructure Engineering Department.
Eight hundred tonnes of ballast have been ordered by the WSR for distribution along the line. The ballast is used in quantity when relaying track at sites such as at Doniford, but it also used in smaller amounts for topping up and building up the shoulders of the trackbed at multiple places along the line. Considering the length of the line, a little ballast spread along both sides of a very long line will amount to a lot ! These photos, posted on wsr.org.uk last week, say it all:
The ballast workings are set to continue on Monday and Tuesday next week, and no doubt at other times that have yet to be confirmed. Sister Class 33 loco D6575 (33 057) has been re-positioned from Platform 1 at Williton (the ‘down’ line) to Platform 2 (the ‘up’ line) to leave the line clear for the ballast train workings. D6575 remains on standby and is fully ready and available for use by the WSR.
The DEPG offers its DIESELGEN service where we (try to) let you know by advance email whenever one of our locos is called into action. In previous years, this service was used to post the dates and times of loco-hauled passenger services, but since Lockdown 1.0, we have expanded it to include ANY working. The difficulty with engineering workings is that they run under the direction of the Infrastructure Engineering group, so dates and times will be varied to suit the circumstances on the day. The webcams provide the answer – we include webcam links in the Dieselgen bulletins so you can watch the live action !
To view the Williton webcam, click on this link. Many thanks to Railcam UK and the WSR for providing these webcam services.
Although it is great to see these locos and their crews at work on the WSR, we must all remember that the railway and the stations are still closed to the public. Safety is the number one priority.
The hopper wagons in use are ex-BR ‘DOGFISH’ types that were built in quantity from 1955 onwards. These wagons are very useful for heritage railways and many have been preserved. They incorporate three discharge chutes that allow ballast to be dropped to the right, to the left or on the centre line of the track, with each chute controlled by the white-painted handwheels that are mounted on the operator’s platform at one end of the vehicle. Each wagon is fitted with the continuous vacuum brake so a brake van (or Guard’s van) is not needed. The smaller white-painted wheel low down on the side of the wagon is for applying the handbrake when the wagon is not under the control of the vacuum brake.
There was a tradition in BR civil engineering days of naming types of wagon after fish or things ‘fishy’. This goes back to the old days of telegraph communication when a codeword was the most useful way of describing a type of wagon with the minimum risk of a mistake being made. There were MERMAID, TURBOT, SEACOW and other types of wagon. The WSR also has several of the smaller ‘CATFISH’ variety. Here’s a photo of a ‘DOGFISH’ (well, a ‘DOGFISH’ hopper wagon, actually):
Ex-BR ‘DOGFISH’ 24t hopper wagon number DB983290, seen here at Dunster station on the WSR on 8th June 2018. The three discharge control handwheels can be seen on the similar wagon to the left. The smaller handwheel at low level on the right is the handbrake. Photo by Geof Sheppard © CC BY-NC 3.0
LOCO NEWS: Other than that reported above, the status of our locos remains unchanged this week, due to lockdown.
DEPG NEWS: The DEPG has been invited to attend at the STEAM & VINTAGE RALLY that is planned for the weekend of 7th and 8th August this year, subject to Covid and the weather of course. We are DELIGHTED to confirm that we will attend and we will be bringing along some of your favourite vintage diesel locomotives!
There is a dedicated website for this rally and there is also a Facebook page so you can find out more about this event from these two sites. We will be contributing to these sites as soon as we have had our plans reviewed and accepted both by the DEPG Board and the WSRA event team. We are really looking forward to it !
DEPG WEBSITE: Our ONLINE SHOP IS NOW LIVE so go ahead and visit our store!
We have just updated our online store to include our new range of coasters. These complement the new range of mugs that we placed on sale last weekend, so we now have multiple products featuring ALL of our heritage locomotive classes. Here some photos to show you what we have been doing:
Mugs featuring your favourite locomotives !
Coasters featuring your favourite locomotives !
WSR NEWS: The WSR have announced that public services will resume on Saturday 22nd May 2021, subject to the reduction of Government restrictions in force at that time. This announcement was made in the WSR’s ‘THE PLATFORM’ e-newsletter. This newsletter has been posted on the WSR website so this news is definitely in the public domain !
The re-opening date allows us to focus on the planning and resourcing of the multiple tasks that need to be completed in order to support the railway, not least of which are staff competencies. The staff ‘refresher’ training could start as early as 12th April, but the work of the infrastructure, signalling, rolling stock and operations teams has to be sufficiently advanced so that the ‘refresher’ trains can actually run at this early date. There is much to do, but we will all pull together to support the WSR and make sure that this season is a success.
The WSR will be running another of their Zoom sessions for volunteers on Wednesday 31st March at 1800 and we encourage all of our volunteers to join these sessions. The next session will be hosted by Steve Williams and will cover Business Development.