The Joys Of Life Railway
Penrhyn Garden Railway
Re-Ballasting Program
By far the worst thing to have happened during the period of the railway’s closure is the ballast’s decline in its ability to drain water, this has left us with the task of cleaning or replacing most of the railway’s ballast, currently we have only replaced ballast in the areas which require it the most urgently.
When replacing ballast on the Joys of Life Railway, the first job to do is to dig a small trench down the side of the section of track you are going to replace the ballast on. Because all the track panels are welded together you have to get a flat garden spade and dig out the ballast from under the track panels at a horizontal angle. As you would expect the old ballast was is full of roots which is what’s preventing the ballast from draining
After this time-consuming job is completed you lay a strip of geotextile underneath the track, this is to prevent roots growing up through the ballast again, and then a ton or two of fresh ballast is poured in between the sleepers along the section of track and brought up to the correct level & even gradient with the help of some home-made profile gauges, the final job is to shovel pack the track from the ends of the sleepers.
Bangor Road LC to Moles Hill
When we began the railway’s revival in ealry 2007 the worst area by far was Moles Hill station where the bottom end points were under about an inch of water.
The approach to Moles Hill before we began work
Volunteer Dave High at work digging out ballast, note the water running up the centre of the photo
The point dried out
Our work station for the day when re-instated the ballast