Jonathan Allen

Sorry Larne Cabin, but that shot of 169 at Larne Harbour with the weed control train is not one of mine. Wish it was, though: 

Also the DH - never got a DH at the harbour. 

I presume the image was taken from Geograph (which I no longer use), and images may be reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence. However, the licence requires attribution as detailed on this web page: Use & remix - Creative Commons

On 9/6/2021 at 12:03 PM, LARNE CABIN said:

Time to get this thread back on track , excuse the pun. I have been working on point rodding at the harbour over the last few weeks.

I started off with a single lever and rod, the only rod which turns left from the box. The crossover between the two platform roads is controlled by lever 24 and one single rod.

At first, I found this hard to understand, as I am no expert in such matters, but a bit of research explained that this was achieved by means of a 'drop lug' which allowed a rod to come off the main rod to the point blade nearest the signal box while the main rod continued to the point blade furthest from the signal box thus operating both points from the one rod and lever.

As this single rod is quite long (over 200 scale feet), a compensator is required. Point rodding expands on warm days and to prevent this from causing a problem to the finely tuned mechanisms the amount of 'push' movement in the rod must equal the amount of 'pull' movement so that the expansion counteracts itself. The compensator is required in the middle of the run to convert half of the rod from 'push' to 'pull', or vice versa.

 

 

 

There are many photos up to late 1969 showing this long run arrangement to control the crossover. I found the one on page 122 of Michael H C Baker's Irish Railways Past and Present, September 1969, very useful and informative, but when the turnout to the goods yard and harbour was lifted the rodding took the shorter more direct route on the signal box side of the tracks, straight to the crossover.

This photo, 12th July 1977, shows the rodding on the more direct route......

and again this 1980 photo.

 

The gang have gone off for lunch, so I was able to get this shot of rodding being assembled for the six rod run towards the bridge. This is being assembled in two groups of three rods each. The six rod run will be a bit of a challenge, but I am into it now!  

There are many photos showing the six rod run, but this 1985 photo gives a fairly clear view of the start of the run. Very useful to me.

Please note that no ballast will be laid until the point rodding is complete and that the colouring at the moment is purely first basic background colouring!

 

I really would appreciate if people posting my photographs would acknowledge copyright: