This is one of those "What's going on here?" posts. The track is to be found in the bay Platform at Princess Risborough station.
Now, I understand that re-using old track in sidings is perfectly normal and sensible but I assumed that any electrical bits would be cleaned off the sleepers first. Those look like pots to support rails for electrification.
More to the point, there are pots inside and outside the rails. This presumably means the track panel came from the London Underground system. Can that happen? Do LU sell old track to Network Rail?
It's a mystery - can anyone clear it up?
4 comments:
Redundant materials could quite easily get passed on through renewals contractors. Various industry suppliers can also supply secondhand materials for installations which don't have specifications as high as mainline renewals too.
Regarding LU equipment, several sleepers found their way onto the Mountsorrel Railway, complete with the electric rail chair holes, and some plastic signage from Harrow-On-The-Hill was still attached to one sleeper!
Also bear in mind that LU and Network Rail probably have agreements for transport/materials handling and other things.
I remember on the Weoshpool and Llanfair railway in the 90's we used ex-LU sleepers because they were good quality Jarrah wood and hadn't been affected by the weather because they were underground. I recall they'd been used for several decades so it was like putting track pins into concrete because they were so dry, but they were good sleepers.
There used to be a permanent way school of some sorts in Risborough but it closed a while ago. I think it was based in a couple of Portakabins to the North of the bay platform. I last remember seeing it operating in the late 1990s.
There may have been LUL pots on it as the other arm of the Chiltern Line (Aylesbury to Marylebone) operates over LUL lines from just north of Amersham to somewhere around Neasden. At a guess, I would suspect someone in BR may have acquired a section of LUL track to train PW gangs working on that section to recognise where BR ended and LUL began.
It may also have been used for driving training. I presume that there is some form of additional training for Chiltern drivers as there are probably different operating rules between BR/NR and LUL. The Chiltern DMUs are fitted with tripcocks so they are compatible with LUL signalling.
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