Thompson Park Miniature Railway, Burnley. Lancashire. UK

August 2024 Newsletter

Narrative by Bret Harrison Track Maintenance

Pictures by Bret and Richard Walker, Society Chairman.

Welcome to our August 2024 newsletter where we try to keep the reader appraised with what we have been up to.

As usual at this time of year we have been very busy with midweek running in the school holidays, a Bank holiday thrown in for good measure and our normal weekend running. The demographic of midweek running in the school holidays changes from normal as Grandparents mostly visit looking after the Grandchildren. 

       Nevertheless, we have found time in between the running to carry out attention to a couple of track issues which had developed and needed attention. I have referred in the past to the track being anything but permanent and here is a good example. The pic below shows the curve between the two paths after the station where the curve had moved to develop a flat bit in the middle. I think the pic demonstrates this. It is a simple fix with a couple of bars pushing it back to shape as the second pic shows. This is the track just after the Beech Garden which had developed a similar issue and which we fixed at the beginning of the month; the new ballast can be picked out. The track was barred back into shape and the cross levels corrected. The first job we have now corrected similarly.

Thursday August 15th was a red letter day for us as we held our first members family and friends only private running day.  It was the concept of our Treasurer David who was happy to dig into the coffers for the necessary to buy some sausages and burgers for the barbecue. He also arranged a superb buffet spread in the clubroom which was provided by Sophie from The Cafe in the Square in Barnoldswick and we thank her for that, it was excellent. Thanks go to John D for sourcing the meat from his butcher Mark in Burnley Market Hall and indeed for acting as chef at the barbecue. John’s cousin Alan supplied the gas barbecue, thank you Alan.

    Thanks go to the guys who prepared the trains for anyone to enjoy running round our track. After a couple of lessons, the kids proved competent and safe under supervision… Future members hopefully.  But most thanks go to David for having the idea and making it work admirably. We will for sure be doing it again.

August 18th and we had a report of the tarmac lifting at the second path crossing after the station and the trains catching it as they traversed. We had no option but to knock out a length of tarmac across the path to clear for the trains to run that afternoon The effort was not wasted as we will now complete the fix by building a new decking crossing similar to the one we built last year on the long river straight.

We had a visit from a Britain in Bloom assessor to inspect the flower tubs on the station which were and still are magnificent and eventually she looked at the 3 gardens we had created by the clubhouse. These gardens were created from former wasteland and are still quite immature as they are in their first summer, one of the gardens is only a month old but still they have been very bonny. They are just starting to go off now as Autumn approaches. We built them for our passengers to enjoy as the train passes. We are not gardeners, only my wife is a gardener and we have of course made more work for ourselves, John D and myself but to be honest we are quite proud of them.

 Emily one of our strong band of under 18’s arranged for our local newspaper, the Burnley Express to feature an article in the paper for us, which they did. They also took a picture of the people who were working on the railway at the time, and we reproduce it here.  Thanks to the Burnley Express for doing that.

The storm which hit the town on Friday Aug.23rd sure left its mark on the railway literally as a massive branch of one of the really big trees in the park was broken off and came crashing down on the railway track. The Parks staff managed to move it off the track which fortunately escaped damage. Since then, the tree fellers (yes! I think there was three) have since cleared all the big branches off the main branch which yesterday was still there, not sure if it has to go or if it is to be left as a bug hotel or whatever.

We were running out of ballast in the bay, and we drew some off our storage facility which was ultimately delivered. It was the end of the stock, and it was not good, being contaminated with muck and unusable as it was. What to do with it? We used some at the station to replace the bark which had been spread there earlier. and was now looking tatty. We scraped this bark off and replaced it with some of the ballast. The remainder was stuck in the bay. John D and I with the help of Peter for a while had little option but to clean it up as best we could with the aim of using it. We sieved 2.5 tonnes of it through a garden sieve with a jet of water and reclaimed it all.   This is NOT going to happen again. We are looking into a method of storing the ballast in bulk in house. It is not apparent yet how we do this, but John and I are not going to be doing this again.

I have completed painting the 2 signal arms for the new semaphore signal post and passed them on to Richard for assembly onto the top brackets. Hopefully we may have the signal completed and up and running soon so I will hold fast on pictures until we hopefully have it in place.

 No decision yet re. the new livery for the Union Pacific locomotive 6659. We had a Society meeting last evening and I think every livery under the sun was being flashed around on phones. It will probably come down to a vote in the end. I know which livery I will vote for but that will remain with me for the time being.

I tend to pick up material for this newsletter based on what I see and pick up as I go along and observe what the other departments are doing so, I pointed out that I need the other departments to be proactive and send me a report of their own activities so that an accurate picture can be established. I noticed that at long last we now have a working PA system on the station which saves the station staff going through the safety briefing before every train departs. Much better! Anyway, our electronics guru Martyn has responded and I transcript his report below.

“August has been spent making small improvements to the signals and fixing problems with them and the speaker system at the station used for making safety briefings.

  The switch for the signals next to the point levers has been replaced as the operators were finding the old one awkward to use. The battery box by the signals has been replaced as the original had no base and had become infested by ants.

   The charger used for the signal and speaker batteries failed and a replacement had to be sourced. The batteries are now charging correctly.

    The amplifier for the speakers has been replaced and the new one has a proper remote control so should be easier to use,

     A better powerpack for the credit /debit card reader and the EE dongle has been obtained which should ensure that these stay charged. The dongle and card reader now connect to each other correctly so reducing the need to wave the reader around to get it to work “.

Thank you Martyn, whatever a dongle is????   Don’t ask!!!

Webmaster note – It’s something that allows a non-phone device to use mobile data.

 So, this concludes the August newsletter. September is under way and things have already happened at the Railway but more on this next month.  September is the last chance for a ride until Santa trains in December as we close for the season at the end of September.