The Classic Machinery Network

I was out on a job at Wareham today where all the track is being renewed.My mate. Bob Masterman filmed this in west Wales.Looks like I will be working Christmas day as there are a lot of Network rail jobs being done in my area.
[video]http://youtu.be/5IPkR3LC048[/video]

Interesting bit of video there, i brought a few memories back of sitting on spoil an ballast trains back in the 80's, on the Southern region we always had Three or four of Gamble's Hymac 580C machines to remove all of the spoil and load it into usually 30-OS wagons, The old track was unbolted and lifted away in sections by a twin arm crane and loaded onto flat wagons, Then the first load of ballast was usually 20 Grampus wagons off the fine ballast for the base, then the crane would return back and unload the new concrete sleeper sections after that the ballast train would come in with the 10 or 12 big sea-lion ballast wagons which would pass over the new track with chutes open then it was just the levelling off with the ballast and the tamper and lining machine would do its bit. The CWR was then put in on another night. Some of the way that it's done nowadays seems more time consuming than when we did it way back then in the 80's especially where they are unloading ballast by machine which seems long winded compared to using the hopper wagons. I wish i had filmed the weekend work now!

There are some ballast hoppers around on a fef jobs,the older hopper wagons discharged their loads,stone was then ploughed in with a "shark " brake van.The job I was on yesterday was moving pretty fast but not so smooth as in the past. And yes,it does seem long winded these days.
Points are now built up off ste and transported on special wagons and loaded at an angle and not flat on the wagon to remain within loading gauge of trains.
Martyn
[video]http://youtu.be/uUPCLWMBWS8[/video]

These are the trailers for carrying switch's/points,'in gauge' waiting to be loaded.