Wensleydale Railway - Photo Archive

Refurbishment of Finghall Crossing

by the Infrastructure Group

Over the period 24th to 27th September 2015 the Level Crossing Deck at Finghall lane was refurbished. A great thank you to all the teams involved, Ops, User Works Crossing, and Infrastructure, without your hard work the job would not have been done!

The crossing decking was relayed about 5-6 years ago using non railway sleepers. These had deteriorated and need replacing for safety reasons. It was decided to replace the decking, the sleepers underneath the decking, and replace about 18 sleepers along the length of the platform. On removing the decking and digging out, the existing sleepers were found to be wider, thicker than normal, and made out of hard wood. From what we told were at least 45 years old and were in good condition, only the fittings were showing their age and had to be replaced.

As there was no need to replace the sleepers in the crossing, we decided to replace all of the sleepers in the platform, bar the first 4 after the crossing. A total of 50 sleepers to change. As we needed to replace all of the ballast, a digger was used to dig out all of the ballast from the non platform side, and dug it wide enough to allow the sleepers to be dragged out. Some of the middles of the sleepers were dug out by machine, the rest were dug out by hand.

The new ballast was dropped in using a dumper truck, then levelled off by hand. Two portable tamping machines were used, with great effect. One extra sleeper was changed, just after where we had finished, it was on a joint and was life expired, making 51 sleepers in total replaced. The new decking was made out of hard wood railway sleepers.

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