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Much of the main buried routes on the Western were hand dug. Not all of the resignalling had been completed as electrification commenced. The main cable strike was in the Pangbourne area which was a buried telecom type cable which still supported signalling circuits.

Utter tosh. Only 3 cables were struck during the installation and only 1 of those caused delays.

I remember the winter of 1982 when mile upon mile of overhead pole route came down due to the weight of snow on the wires. I'm pretty sure it was around the Yeovil area. Copper everywhere and snapped poles strewn around. We used every bit of interruption cable we had laid on the ground to...

I think it should be remembered that the wires on the poles were a lot bigger than the small stuff used for telephone circuits to domestic properties. They weren't measured by diameter but by poundage. So you'd take a block of copper, stretch it for a mile and that's the final size. The normal...

I was watching the Blue Lamp film recently and in the scene where Dirk Bogarde has crossed the line escaping capture you can see him climbing the embankment past a pole where the cables come down and cross under the bridge. We used to have a piece of kit called a Mox iron which was used to...

54 pairs not 52 :-)

Looking at the picture the cable on the left is an old telecom type cable which contains a bit more metal than just copper.

The windows and frames were in the habit of falling out, hence the plywood panels. I think the yellow marks maybe where they've been inspected and indicate which ones need repair and which ones don't.

I had a chat with one of my ex colleagues who used to adjust the clocks at Temple Meads in the 80s. There were 3 systems at the station apparently and when I asked where they got the accurate time from to do the adjustments he said "we used our watches, nothing more than that" I remember buying...

Those are 1 ton bags of aggregate, be it ballast or otherwise. It's the standard way of getting stone to a site and putting it where needed. I'm sure one of the Pway experts on here will add further details.

I suspect that they are used as covers for the troughs leading to the locs. The drivers walkway on the east end of Bristol Temple Meads leading up to the train care depot at Barton Hill are used in that way. Trough lids are notorious in icy weather.

Not sure if this counts but wasn't Filton Abbeywood Station built on the old NCB Sidings ?

Trial holes are only part of a whole process which is undertaken prior to excavations going ahead. I would spend hours going through historical plans, rail enthusiasts photos, aerial photos etc etc. You are correct in that you'll never find everything but you have to make every effort. With...

Before I finished work with NWR in 2021 I was the buried services manager for Infrastructure Projects on the Western. It was my job to assist the contractors in locating and identifying buried services. The first thing I would always tell the contractor was that if you dug a trench from one...

The Henbury line wasn't re signalled as part of the BASRE project so that work will eat into any funding. Would it be a separate project ?

The whole of the station is being rewired but a lot of work remains to be done once the scaffolding associated with the roof works comes down. In addition all the redundant signalling, telecoms, CIS, PA cabling and equipment left and never recovered throughout the station is/has been/to be removed.

I don't know Wolverton but I suggest it's either a Relay Room or a Telecom Node (FTN)

All of the legacy cable drawings for the MLN were available. Now it doesn't matter if the exact location of the cables is shown on those drawings or not, what is important is the fact that something is there. So trial holes were dug at each location where a pile was to be installed, if something...

Well seeing as I'm the expert I can assure you only one cable was hit.

They didn't hit multiple cables and in fact after the one incident at Pangbourne they brought in an expert who in fact stopped further strikes completely, not only for GWEP but all major projects on the Western.