Bridge that Gap: Great Central Railway News

Meanwhile the scaffolding has been removed from the Canal bridge but the big "cross beams" are still in place. These will be craned out and the lattice girders put back "soon". Although much of the brickwork has been repaired and re-pointed, the "wing walls" canal side will still need a fair bit of work.

 

Here is the view across the Canal Bridge on Saturday
There will be approx 12" of ballast laid so the rails will be about to the level of the top edge of that horizontal plate work

 

Might an alternative form of track be cheaper when it is being laid on a bridge deck rather than on the ground?

 

Hi MellishR
I believe it is usual to use wooden sleepers on bridge decks as they are lighter and more resilient than concrete......but I am not a PW expert!

 

I was thinking of the weight of the ballast and how you might avoid that by some form of fixing the track directly to the bridge deck.

 

The new recycled plastic sleepers perhaps ?

See where you are coming from on the no ballast thing - seems sensible to me, nowhere for hidden moisture to accumulate...

 

In terms of future maintenance it would be preferable to cross the bridge with ballasted track. It can be tamped as one with the approach tracks. Also it is a pain in the a**e trying to get a good top across the transition between ballasted track and bridge timbers as they behave very differently under a train.
Does anyone have any word about plastic sleepers. I know the Ffestiniog use them, as do the Great Orme, but haven't heard of any standard gauge use. War stories, anyone?
Pat

 

The bridge survived its first 100 years using traditional ballast. Now that it has been restored to good condition I can't see any reason not to continue with conventional track construction.

 

The only standard gauge plastic sleepers I've seen were a few used as a transition between the oversized concrete sleepers next to the new level crossing at Rolvenden and the conventional track on Orpin's curve.

 

SNCF must have been using them for some time as they recently donated a large quantity of used ones to the metre gauge MTVS line at Crevecour. More details and pictures on the N.G. Enthusiasts Facebook pages.
Ray.

 

All the bridges on the NYMR that have been replaced in the last 30 years have all been ballasted deck except for one and that was new rail bonded into a channel in the concrete deck. Br 7 at Pickering Stn.

Ballasted deck enables tamping to be carried out without having to run in / run out with a tamper.
Use of concrete sleepers should not be a problem for any newly designed bridge, use of timber does not save that much loading.
Drainage should not be a problem if designed correctly and no damage occurs to the Geotextiles and membranes.
NOt used Plastic sleepers yet and I know no location on standard gauge were they are installed, although I believe that there is a proposed test site somewhere.

Other types of bridge especially waybeams and trough deck types are a maintenance headache.

 

Unless their price has reduced significantly from when I asked the question, standard gauge plastic sleepers are an expensive first cost, even if they give a (claimed) longer life.

 

Thanks for all the info.

 

Plastic Sleepers; dont rot, probably lighter and more durable than concrete, but i imagine that they dont damp vibration as well as traditional wood.

 

There is now a new video about the Re-unification on the GCR website....nice to have something positive in these extraordinary times...

 

Sadly yet another video made unwatchable (for some of us) by the added-on music.

 

I muted the sound and read the sub-titles. It seems that the producers acknowledged that the sounds might be annoying to some (many?) so well done to them.

 

I hadn't thought of that. Thank you.
Edit: the sub-titles are auto-generated (so no credit to the producers after all) and don't scroll properly. As the line lengths and numbers of lines change, the current caption is mixed up with bits of the previous one.

 

Yes, annoying to many.

A better use of effort and cost would to make the full screen option available. The age demographic of subscribers and potential subscribers must be that of more senior people. What happens when we age? Our ears don't work as well so intrusive "music" masks any commentary; making it difficult to understand. Eyesight similarly deteriorate so a larger picture enables detail to be seem more clearly.

Aren't us older (potential) subscribers considered when such material is produced?

Rant over!

 

I watched it full-screen on YouTube with no problem.