It's been a considerable while, it seems, since I have been able to do anything of any substance on my line, due to having to renovate a house suitable for my daughter and her fiance to inhabit. Well that is done and finished now, they have been in there for a little over 2 weeks. Amazingly it is still standing.
Anyway, this weekend I have been able at last to turn my attention to a very urgent matter - no trains have run this year, owing to some wind-damage sustained to the bridge that spans the pond.
It is the original bridge, first built (from trellis-work) and installed in 2001 - before any track was even purchased! However, being of wood construction, with little or no preservative applied, it was only a matter of time before the ravages of the British weather would end its life - and so it finally proved, in April this year, a particularly strong wind was enough to cause a partial collapse.
A sad sight indeed:
By a happy coincidence, last weekend I was dismantling my daughter's old bed frame - comprising some sturdy wooden sides and some slats on which the mattress lay. It occurred to me as I took it apart, that these wooden sides would be potentially useful as the basis for a new bridge. Well this weekend, I was finally able to make use of it. Firstly, though, I needed to remove the last remnants of the old structure:
Fortunately, the wooden framework was long enough to span the pond completely!
Most of the slats were in good shape too:
This time I wanted to preserve the wood as best I could before putting it to use, so I dug out my old 'creosote substitute' recipe and gave everything a liberal coating - including myself it seems
The 'track beds' were made the long wooden pieces salvaged from the old bridge - although green and dirty, they seemed fairly sound so I gave them a new lease of life as the platform on which the sleepers would rest:
Once assembled, and with a final coat of creosote substitute for good measure, I placed the resulting structure back over the pond:
Finally (for now) I was able to reconnect the trackwork:
Obviously this is just the basic sub-structure - I am still mulling over the possibilities as to how to make it look - indeed, the recently resurrected thread on railway suspension bridges has had me thinking. But as the last photo shows all too clearly, there is much work to be done before a train will be run this year - the lineside vegetation has had a 9-month head start on me so it could be a while.
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