WHR/FR news

Contractors Jones Bros of Ruthin began moving plant and portakabins to Porthmadog Harbour today and the first deliveries of rock are due next week. 25,000 tons from Minffordd Quarry are due to be dumped on the seaward side of the Cob to widen 260 metres of it to allow construction of a new platform for FR and WHR trains and a runround loop for the WHR.

Work is due to be completed in early Spring and volunteers will then begin laying the first sections of new track.

Platform construction will commence later this year prior to lifting and relaying of the remaining five roads and completion of the new island platform in time for the start of the 2013 season.

Total cost of the project is just over £1 million. WHR services this year will continue to use the pilot loco procedure. All WHR services will run through to Porthmadog, Pont Croesor will be downgraded to halt status.

New timetables are online for both railways at Ffestiniog & Welsh Highland Railways

Outline of Cob widening work here.

 

A grainy photo of the train leaving Beddgelert on it's return in extremely dull conditions.

I did think at the time it all looked rather merry inside the coaches! As well as rather full.

 

How to widen a Cob. Day One.

F&WHR Cob Widening Day One - YouTube

 

Good start! Looks like some fine Welsh sunshine in the afternoon?

 

quite the inverse of the Bluebell Tip!very funny!
regards
noel

 

Day 2.

Cob widening Day2.wmv - YouTube

We'll put a page up on the main FR site with a link to all these tomorrow, so I don't have to post a link every day.

 

fascinating!many thanks for the video!
regards
Noel

 

William Madocks would be impressed.

 

Cob widening progess videos will now appear automatically at Ffestiniog & Welsh Highland Railways - FRTV - Cob Widening
Saturday morning clips will be added to the following Monday's.

 

One frame every 15 seconds. I then assemble the 2,000 or so pictures from each day into a video allowing each frame a tenth of a second. I use an electronic brain to do this, rather than putting every one in by hand.

We are assembling one video that will cover the entire Cob widening. We will almost certainly edit and speed this up to make it a sensible length. So the only way you'll be able to see the whole thing is by tuning into FRTV on the website each day. Saturday mornings will be added on the front of the Monday instalment.

 

The videos are assembled from the jpgs using the free Windows Live moviemaker - works a treat and very fast. The webcam software is described by our IT supremo as 'Cheap and nasty. Well, nasty, anyway'. I'll try to ascertain exactly what it is.

 

Being an apple user, I can recommend iStopmotion which controls the camera and movie compiling in one piece of software. But that is not much help to a windows user ( although they may have a windows version?)

 

Having now had some direct experience of the software in question - I can now drive the webcam machine from my PC in the office and from home - I can but confirm our IT man's opinion of the software. It's ghastly and from France.

We will be improving it substantially in the next month or so.

 

Andrew, the updates are much appreciated. Tell me, the rock from Minffordd quarry, is that just over-burden? If so, how does that play with the landfill tax, positive or negative?

Foxy

 

It's quarried specifically for the Cob widening which doesn't attract landfill tax. The Environment Agency has also given us the go-ahead to use a stone washer to use stone originally quarried for the Port bypass as we're using the stone faster than Minffordd can dig it out of the ground. Again, this will be tax-free.

 

OK, interesting, thanks. I had wondered if some of the quarry spoil from the slate mines was to be recycled. I see there is a move to get the N. Wales slate mines "World Heritage" status - an argument I made thirty years ago in my degree thesis (although there was no "World Heritage" category then!) to prevent the piecemeal destruction of the landscape they created.

Foxy

 

No slate waste, just granite.