Railway volunteers at the Downpatrick and County Down Railway were celebrating a major milestone this weekend in a major track renewal at the county town’s heritage railway station, as they take advantage of the winter break to carry out some essential work.
The entire length of track that runs along the station platform has been entirely removed and completely replaced in a rush against time to be ready for St. Patrick’s Day, when the steam train will once again be used as part of the town’s “Park and Ride” services for the carnival and celebrations.
DCDR Chief Civil Engineer David Crone explained the size of the project and said: “The track in the station was the only remaining wooden sleepered track left on the system, and it was beginning to show it’s age.
“It has been a long time since Translink or Irish Rail have used large sections of wooden track and supplies of good quality sleepers are hard to obtain in Northern Ireland so we are replacing them with concrete ones, which will make maintenance in the future a lot easier.
“One of the key goals in this project is to lower the height of the step from the platform into the train, making it much easier for passengers of limited mobility to board.
“The track was 5-inches too high along most of the platform face making it more difficult for passengers entering and leaving trains so we needed to address this problem as well.”
So far, work has seen all the old wooden timbers removed, old ballast stone removed and new ballast added– and volunteers are now moving on to replacing the track with concrete sleepers which originally came from the Belfast-Antrim ‘Bleach Green Line’, which were recovered when the line was reopened after being mothballed for over two decades.
Work has seen volunteers working three days during the week as well as weekends to complete the mammoth operation – which also required moving the passenger and buffet trains out of the way to access the track – not an easy task Mr Crone says when the station yard is comparatively small to work in.
David Crone added: “Now that all the track on the platform face is laid, we are going to tackle the second line, the passing loop, which our visitors will know as the line the locomotives uses to run round the train on running days. Here we need to replace two sections of wooden track and addition of a new safety feature known as a trap point”.
The Downpatrick & County Down Railway is a volunteer run not-for-profit charity, and is always on the lookout for new recruits – if you have a passion for mucking in with heritage, check out the ‘Get Involved’ section of the DCDR website”
www.downrail.co.uk/getinvolved
and maybe you’ll find yourself a new hobby.
