The Charnwood Forest Light Railway

[Soar Valley Light]

Greetings one and all. I hope everyone had a good Christmas and are in the process of seeing in the New Year in style!

Progress in the Charnwood Forest has been painfully slow - literally! My Partner having a serious RTA, my back giving out, closely followed by a partial dislocation of by digging elbow and my Dad having to go for major surgery to repair a hernia, have meant progress has been woeful. To confound things even more, on the rare occasions I have had chance to get into the garden it has rained!

Fortunately I'm finding a bit of time to spend on outdoor activities at the moment, however, the recovery from this situation has demanded that I devote my initial efforts to the allotments. Finally I've managed a couple of shifts in the house garden, it's all still very much 'enabling work' but it's all progress I guess.



This is the excavation work for the station approach. Levels still have to be finalised but I can see much more clearly where I'm going now (although I appreciate it might not be obvious to anyone else!)



An this is the view the other way. The railway needs to squeeze between the vegetation and the path to the centre left of the picture; a tunnel may be in order here! There will be a continuous run in the bottom part of the garden (that currently resembles a moonscape!). It will be at a lower level and the gradients between the two are still under review but the aim is to go no steeper than 1 in 50 at worst (and hopefully much less)

Further work was done in the lower area with the transplanting of some gooseberry bushes off the course of the railway. A long way to go still, but no quite so far as there was before this latest push!

Watch out for the next thrilling instalment.

Andrew

[Peter Butler]

Andrew, I'm sorry to hear of all the things which seem to have happened together particularly at this time of year. Let's hope you get an opportunity to progress the work as soon as the monsoon season is over.

[Annie]

Oooooooo I dislocated my elbow once, - it's something I never what to do again

I hope work on your railway will proceed with better speed in 2016.

[Andrew]

Good luck for 2016!

My first garden line ran along a row of gooseberry bushes which I clipped very close for a sort of bonsai effect and which I thought looked rather like oaks if you squinted a bit - albeit oaks with very large acorns!

Looking forward to first train pics this year...

Andrew

[Soar Valley Light]

More progress today! Some minor enabling work has continued since the last post but today saw real progress. The last of the vegetation clearance was complete and earthworks proper commenced. Only a short stretch but it has finally enabled be to get a perspective on the main circuit of the line, it's alignment and the potential levels of it and the connection to the terminus.

It's also refocussed my plans. I came to realise I had begun to wander from the construction of a line to run steam on in the garden in favour of a scale model of a fictional railway. I'm back on track (sorry!) and I've stopped trying to cram six stations into the small space available. I'm back to the prospect of runs of plain line making its way through the scenery, free from the clutter of a station every three feet! That's what the Hornby Dublo will be for if I ever find time to clear the cellar and pursue that particular pipe dream!

Anyway, here are a couple of really poor shots of todays work.



Ongoing progress

With the ground clear the top soil was stripped off to make way for embankemt core construction using sandier material stockpiled earlier.The alignment can be made out curving round from left to right.

The embankment core was them tipped and compacted. The aim is to drive plastic stakes into the top of this after it has settled and compacted. To these will be fixed longitudinal runners, one either side, much like the Filcris system only using cheaper commercially available materials. The track will be fixed directly to the top of these runners. The final part of the embankment will then be built up around this construction.

Finally a pretty diabilical shot along the line of the embankment core. I hope you can make it out curving away to the left. this was just as I was finishing work and the light was distinctly fading!


Goodness knows when the next leap forward will be, the allotment is calling for attention too, but I'm determined to press on as soon as I can now. I need to get some flower beds prepared (apparently!) so that the garden has colour in it this year!

[Andrew]

Hello!

Great progress, especially in such grim weather. I've abandoned the garden for the time being, partly because of the cold but also because the lawn's a quagmire and every step I take on it makes it worse...

The filcris-esque construction technique sounds interesting, looking forward to learning more about that...

I've stopped trying to cram six stations into the small space available. I'm back to the prospect of runs of plain line making its way through the scenery, free from the clutter of a station every three feet!

They do take up an awful lot of room, don't they? I convinced myself I needed three stations, and I suppose I still think that given the end-to-end nature of my line (there's an upper and lower terminus and a passing station), but there's not nearly enough "ordinary" track to help create the illusion of a train going somewhere...

Anyway, nice work - looking forward to the next instalment!

Andrew.

[Annie]

Digging an embankment in Winter that is seriously intrepid. It must feel good to be making a start though.

[Joe]

well done for braving the winter elements, its looking like youve got some decent space for landscaping there which will tie in with your minimal station theme. Should be a pretty long run by the time its finished?
cheers
Joe

[Soar Valley Light]

Thanks for the encouragement folks.

Andrew,

I understand your predicament exactly, I'd like to achieve the same. To achieve a continuous run though I'm going to have to forego a third station of any size at all, I might squeeze in a loop and a siding. I think I can do this and still achieve sufficient operational interest though.

It certainly does feel good to have made a start Annie.

Joe,

There isn't that much room I'm afraid, I'm going to have to work hard on perspective and landscaping to make it fit convincingly into the space available and provide the features I want to include. It's going to be important to consider the view of the line from set perspective points to create what I'm after. The continuous run will be no more than 20m at best with a 10m branch to the terminus. There may end up being another branch off the circuit to a triangular junction outside the terminus to allow out and back working.

I managed another hour out there today. I'd planned more but a snow fall last night put paid to that until a thaw set in this afternoon. Even then it was saturated underfoot. I moved some of the soil dump out of the way. This exposed some drier ground and so I dug out the topsoil up to the edge of the former strawberry patch. I was also able to tip some embankment core material into this. In fact I extended both ends of the embankment in this way. It was far too wet to contemplate any compaction though. I remember from my days on earthmoving work just how damaging it can be to overwork material in the wet. We had a tip foreman who used to say each Autumn, when the ground reached a certain wetness, 'It'll be no good now until the cuckoo comes'. He was invariably right - roll on Spring!

Andrew

[Soar Valley Light]

Progress has been slower than I'd hoped on the garden railway, various obstacles have been responsible but at least I have managed to keep going forwards, even if it is at snails pace! Having no working space is the biggest problem, it's a bit like one of those word puzzles you used to get where you slid the letters round in a square frame to form words, there being only one space to move into at a time, much like solitaire. The next step has to be some wall building and I'm struggling a bit for materials and even more for 'get up and go' to get up and get on with it!

Today I managed to do a little bit more setting out to give me an idea of where things will fit. This seems a good photo opportunity so please see below. The route is marked out in white line marking paint, it covers about half the total railway, junk (sorry, stored materials!) prevent going any further. The right hand side nearest the wall is quite difficult to make out as it is partly hidden by the rough ground. I'm not planning to build the line through the current topography, once the Filcris foundation is in I shall be terraforming around the railway to form the ground profiles I want to best fit the line and make it interesting.


View of the bottom end looking over to where the passing loop will be.


Looking back up the garden towards to top end, the branch will peel off on the right hand side and run up beyond the arch (covered in honeysuckle) to the terminous outside the kitchen.


View from the bathroom window!


More updates when there is somehting to share - hopefully something more railway like!

Andrew

[Andrew]

Your neighbours must be wondering what on earth's going on!!! Depending on how well they already know you they might be even more surprised when they realise what the white line really represents...

I remember well the piles of useful building material that had to be moved before each stretch of line could be built - I really did use almost all of mine in the end, but your puzzle analogy is very accurate, that's exactly what it felt like...

It looks like it's going to be a fantastic little line when you get there - first train by the autumn?

Thanks for the update, good luck with the next phase,

Andrew.

[Dwayne]

Andrew, great to see you're making progress. Looks like the railway is going to have the distinctive charm that seems to be prevalent on that side of the pond.

[LNR]

Well Andrew I'm obviously late to this project, but I've just read it from the beginning and as others have said, all your planning in the past is now very evident. I get the sense that you will not leave this alone until you have a section of track to run something on. I'm sure all your backaches will seem worthwhile in the end, as you run your first train, and your preparation work will pay dividends in trouble free running in the future. Keep that vision going!
Grant.

[Soar Valley Light]

Thanks for the encouragement guys, I need every bit I can get!

I've had a couple of days on the Bluebell Railway (Grant/Dwayne, that's one of our volunteer run Heritage railways) since the last post but now I'm back I must keep chipping away at the job. I managed an hour moving bits and pieces around tonight and the plans are coming together, especially in my head!

I need to get some building sand and cement next and get stuck into the wall building that I've been putting off for weeks!  :?

Andrew

[Soar Valley Light]

Two updates within a week, things are looking up for the CFLR!

Determined to try and get a patch of garden capable of planting flowers in this year (bringing the railway closer to completion is just a bonus, honest!), I've pressed on with the work. I'm thinking on my feet a bit more than I really ought to be when it comes to design but it seems to be working out at the moment.

The furthest extremity of the line will be a 242.5 degree curve to take it from one side of the garden and bring it back up the other. One half of this will be occupied by a crossing loop and the other will be the junction off the circular running track up to the terminus area. I want this section of track to be easily accessible, both for loco handling and access to the trains and track for shunting purposes. This also happened to be the area I struck a vein of clean sand and gravel below the subsoil and became a quarry for construction materials. This quarry created a natural operating pit! However, it was only about three feet from the garden wall and street beyond and at the height of production a good four feet below ground level. Obviously that arrangement couldn't remain without serious risk of collapse and consequent undermining of the wall - not the best thing to have fall on the second most important station on your railway; walling was called for!

Originally I planned a two foot path running down alongside the line, finishing in a simple dead end but this didn't feel quite right aesthetically. After some trial and tribulation, not to mention combustion of midnight oil, I came up with a plan for a circular end to the path. I'm not sure my bricking is up to this but we shall know soon enough. This being the lowest part of the new construction I dug a sump about 18" - 2' deep into the gravel bed, lined it with an old plastic seed tray then covered it with some geotextile. Next was a ring of brick ends filled behind with some locally produced hardcore. Today I mixed up some concrete, using some of the excavated sand and gravel, and topped off the brick and hardcore base to give a good footing for the new wall. I hope to start bricking next week although I know I'm short of bricks, despite having had a massive stockpile cluttering up the garden - if I've moved them once in the last two years I've moved them a thousand times! Time to go skip scavenging I think!!!!


Here's the wall foundation - compare with the much earlier picture of the sand quarry higher up this post, taken from roughly the same place!



On the edge of the railway a small self set holly tree was already growing. I've decided to try and prune this into a (large) miniature. It's a long shot as it's really far too old to try miniaturising but there's nothing to loose by trying. At least it feels like a positive step and a first piece of my 16mm world!

[KNO3]

Are you building a pond too?

[Soar Valley Light]

Are you building a pond too?

Funnily enough that's what the neighbours asked!

There will be a stream which will end in some sort of catchment area (to provide a sump to pump back from). The inspiration for this has come from the Peckforton Light Railway. However, it will be a smallish affair and none of the excavation you can see is intended to be part of it. The sunken area is intended to be an operating pit for the station and junction area.

Todays activity was confined to stock-taking the bricks available and tidying up the terminus station area. Domestic chores ruled out anything more I'm afraid.

[KNO3]

I was quite sure the sunken area was meant to be a nice pond with lilies and goldfish, surrounded by a railtrack that crosses small bays on the pond's edge on little wooden bridges... :-)

[Soar Valley Light]

It's been quite a busy weekend for the contractors engaged to build the railway (Me!). The extra day available made a difference of course. The allotment may have suffered as a result, as has my back, but there is some genuine bricks and mortar progress.

I managed to get a bottom ring of headers down on top of the foundations last week but this Saturday I made a start on building up the wall proper. I'm delighted with the progress. I can't say it's finished because I don't know what that looks like yet, there is an element of making this up as I go along! That's mainly because I'm not certain how much soil I'm going to have to work with at the end of the day. At the risk of overdoing a good thing a couple of photos of the progess are attached.

As you can tell, I'm quite chuffed with my handiwork, mainly because I'm enough of an engineer to know that being able to survey, design and specify doesn't make me a natural bricky! I've done some basic foundation bricking in the past and some very minor reconstruction of a couple of walls but I was very reluctant to attempt a curved wall from scratch, let alone one that is more than 200 degrees of a full circle! After a lot of thought I came to the conclusion this form of construction was the only sensible option and money wasn't available to hire in a sub cantractor so, I took the plunge. Despite having a good grounding in surveying I very nearly came a cropper with this job. You will spot a post in the centre of the well, this was knocked in before the hole was dug to act as a setting out point for the alignment of the railway. There were actually two but this one was used for the main baseline, not just the track alignment so I made sure it survived the excavation. It wasn't installed to the millimeter but was pretty close. Once I set my mind on how to control the wall construction I realised that using a piece of timber cut to the radius of the wall to measure from this post to the construction work would do the job. All was going swimmingly, it was a little cramped working around the post and I was worried about disturbing it, especially after having dug so much ground from around it. It was then I realised that I couldn't remember checking it for verticality - ever! I immediately checked an found that it was indeed out of true! I was three courses up by this stage! Fortunately it was out by less than an inch at that height and so I was able to make the necessary adjustments to recover the situation. There is a saying in the world of engineering (and particularly on the p.way) - 'Measure twice cut once' - basically check and double check before you do anything, I should have checked rather than assuming before I began building. Luck for me a got away with it!

[LNR]

Well Andrew, given that I'm looking at the wall from the underneath and you say your error is low down, I can't see a thing wrong at all. I'm sure your the only one who will notice any difference if it exists. Great work, looking forward to the first track pics.
Grant.