New siding ballasted by volunteers at Downpatrick
The only standard gauge heritage railway in Northern Ireland, the Downpatrick & County Down Railway, has laid its first piece of new track since 2012. In an exercise that took place last Saturday, March 22, volunteers ballasted a new siding in the yard at Downpatrick. The work had to be done with precision as the location of this siding is in a limited clearance area, which meant the ballast had to be dropped in small quantities by a small road-rail tipper truck with lots of manual labour.
Over the course of the day, 10 small truck-loads of ballast were gradually moved from its temporary storage point near the West Crossover to wherever it was needed in the siding. Once the track was fettled using shovels and rakes, bigger loads of ballast were dumped across the track, before GEISMAR hand tampers were used to pack the stones filling the gaps below the sleepers, with the process repeating itself if more ballast was required.
Road-rail tipper truck dumping ballast // Credit: Downpatrick & County Down Railway
By the end of the day, only the levelling of the track and the installation of some fishplates were to be completed, while the ballasting work had reached the shed from the points giving access to the siding. The new siding leads to the new shed, which is now over ten years old and will eventually have rails running into it.
Some of the materials used in the work were from a generous donation that the railway received last summer[1].