Thompson Park Miniature Railway, Burnley, Lancashire  UK.

January 2025 newsletter.

Narrative by Bret Harrison Track Maintenance Dept.

Welcome to our January 2025 newsletter and it is hard for me to think that I have been doing these newsletters for a year now, the first being in Dec. 2023.

Again, the hardy members who regularly turn up twice a week to carry out maintenance on our railway have been busy, it is a pity that other members do not turn up to do this vital work but we soldier on regardless. I touched upon us almost completing the new trap point runoff we were working on last month, well this has now been completed, track packed, levelled and ready for its first customer , NOT !  we did build in a gradient helped by the lie of the land which will slow any runaway but did need to fit a buffer stop at the end which was constructed in our workshop, unlike the first siding by our garden no.2 the buffer stop of which was was welded to the rails, this time we opted to build a removable one which would be secured to the end of the rails with fishplates. A 30 minute job was expected in fitting it but, and I suppose we have all been here, 2 hours later we had successfully fitted it. 

 A major addition to our maintenance vehicles is our latest acquisition, an electric 4-wheel drive powered wheelbarrow to replace our petrol one which was more that a bit tired having given sterling service for many years. The new addition has not seen service yet but will be a great boon in civil engineering work we do in future. At the same time we also acquired a petrol driven wacker whose main requirement will be in compacting ballast around the railway, this will replace our hand powered heavy compactor. Perhaps the increasing age of our guys has been considered, are we being spoiled ? NAAH !  essential equipment !

Major strides in the refurbishment of locomotive 6659 have been made. The loco has been completely dismantled and all the transmission components have been degreased and cleaned ready for re-assembly, the bogies have been removed and again degreased, cleaned and repainted. The chassis itself its presently sitting on accommodation bogies and an enormous amount of work has gone into stripping all the paint it carried which was substantial. The frames have been repainted in red oxide and primer applied. A top coat has been applied which will remain secret for now !!!!  so the long job of building the loco back up is now commencing. An enormous amount of work has gone into this loco by various members and all I can say is that she deserves it after so many years of service. Soon we will have the body back in the new livery and we look forward to that.

 A reality of being in the park with so many many mature trees surrounding the track is that we have a huge problem with leaf fall so we do our best with a powerful hand held leaf blower which we walk around all the track with. It occurred to us that we could maybe short circuit this trek with fitting the blower to a wagon which a loco could push around the track so with Heath Robinson hats on we had a bash at achieving this so with a lot of apologies about how it looks here it is and it WORKS !  code named HR1 it will be a good boon to us unless it drops to bits ????  

Track renewals and we have spent quite a lot of working sessions refurbishing the track as it traverses the woods at the far end of the railway. The site was between the last path crossing by the river bridge at the end of the long straight and the railway bridge and was the last section of track for us to be involved with since we joined the Society. The rails are fine and good for many years yet, but we spot changed sleepers and renewed all the fastening screws which hold the rails to the sleepers in every sleeper, We remove all the fishplates, clean the rail ends, grease and fit fresh fishplates to the joints. Finally packing the track and loading new ballast where shortages occur. The removed fishplates are cleaned, re-drilled and new locking nuts and bolts fitted ready to go again. Now we will be on operation Forth Bridge where we start all over. 5 years since I joined the railway so that is how long it has taken though we have been involved in many other projects in the meantime.

We are also working on making a new sign which will face the carpark and will direct potential passengers to our station.

All the white lines have been repainted at the station and also where necessary as we prepare the railway for the next season which commences at Easter and which we look forward to very much.