Railway concrete works

[Gloster]

A booklet was produced by Wild Swan in 1987 titled Southern Nouveau an Essay in Concrete.ISBN 0 906867 47 9

I think it has been republished in extended form and a few are still available from Strathwood as Southern Nouveau And The Lineside. (I am fairly sure it is the same book.)

 

[Dunfanaghy Rd]

The S.R. concrete p-way huts are interesting. They have the roof corners clipped so that they could be carried on a lowfit within gauge, and I've seen photos of them being unloaded with an S.R. rail mounted hand crane*.
Intriguing to me that every one you see about - and there are plenty, probably because they're pretty indestructible - was carried by rail all the way from Devon and unloaded on site by a hand crane - sometimes in the middle of a section. Perhaps they set out with a train of them, and dropped them off along a route.

*some may remember the Triang Railways model of this crane.

There are 4 bolts visible on the roofs of both gang hut and toolshed. Both are set at the same spacing, and when removed allow insertion of ring-bolts. There was a special cross-shaped lifting bale to suit (one was still extant in Woking PAD in the middle 1990's). The bale hooked into the ring bolts and the crane lifted the unit on to a prepared base of Meldon dust.
Pat

 

[Gloster]

There are 4 bolts visible on the roofs of both gang hut and toolshed. Both are set at the same spacing, and when removed allow insertion of ring-bolts. There was a special cross-shaped lifting bale to suit (one was still extant in Woking PAD in the middle 1990's). The bale hooked into the ring bolts and the crane lifted the unit on to a prepared base of Meldon dust.
Pat

I think that these bolts were also used with the rods as part of the arrangement for securing the huts on the former Diagram 1773 wagons for transport (see #21).

 

[Gloster]

It looks as though the LNER also had a second depot at Lowestoft. London Transport seems to have had one just north of Parsons Green, although how long for I cannot say.

 

[Dr_Paul]

However, when the failing concrete footbridge had to be replaced at Woolston, the planning application details revealed that the Exmouth Junction prefabricated components were of very poor quality, apparently they incorporated ballast straight off local beaches in the concrete, storing up future corrosion problems.

The concrete footbridge at North Sheen, constructed when the station was opened there in the 1930s, lasted until the 1980s, when it required replacing (its replacement is a story in itself, but not for this thread); the one over the line between St Mary's Grove and Sheendale Road in Richmond, also built in the 1930s, is still there, although the piers have been reinforced. This bridge is known in the area as 'The Wooden Bridge', even though it's been a concrete one for some 90 years.

 

[Taunton]

This bridge is known in the area as 'The Wooden Bridge', even though it's been a concrete one for some 90 years.

Quite common. The footbridge west of Taunton station (opposite end to the concrete works, just to keep us marginally on topic) is still always known in the town, and even to Network Rail on the notices there, as "Forty Steps", although replaced by ramped approaches long ago.

 

[Rail Ranger]

The long concrete CLC footbridge over the yard at Skelton Junction, installed in the 1920s, was replaced by a shorter metal bridge over the surviving running lines in 1972. The bridge is locally still referred to as "Black Bridge", a reference to the wooden bridge that was replaced by the concrete bridge in the 1920s.