They went Into The Valley, did'nt they? :)

I believe that skids are still in almost daily use on the Blackpool Tramway. Derailments are common because of sand blowing into the rail grooves and causing the wheels to ride up. The Tramway engineers had the re-railing down to a fine art - time is money as they say.

Loco Jacks
 

On the Rhodesia Railways all locos had jacks. It was down to the crew to re-rail any derailed wagons. It could take 6 to 8 hours to get a recovery crew to you which would mean everything was at a standstill, single line working. If there wasn't enough sidings for the trains then a recovery train could not get through. So recovery teams would have to come by road. This could often mean dirt tracks, which if wet could cause more problems with heavy lorries getting stuck in the mud. So we would have to use jacks and crow bars and a bit of brute power. You can see the jacks on the front of the Garratt in the photo below

Thanks for that Syd. One tends to forget how self sufficient crews need to be in more remote places!

Best wishes,

John H-T.

You certainly had to know your stuff working for Rhodesia Railways, what with derailments and lions and other wildlife roaming about eh Syd.:)

"You certainly had to know your stuff working for Rhodesia Railways, what with derailments and lions and other wildlife roaming about eh Syd".

This is true Locojoe, but then we did not have to know all the routes and station layouts that the British crews had to know. The two largest stations in Rhodesia were Bulawayo and Salisbury. Salisbury only had 3 platforms and Bulawayo had 4. The only double line working was between the two cities, all the rest were single line. All of the signals were C.T.C color light working apart from the line through Botswana which had semaphore but for a long time that line was crewed by South Africans. On the main line from Bulawayo through Sawmills, Dett, Thompson Junction and Victoria falls and into Zambia, there was only one train every two hours. In the evening there was a mixed goods/passenger and one Mail (express passenger) train that ran over night. (Express passengers also carried mail and were timed at 45mph)
So as you can see we did not have as much to worry about as the British crews did. In all my time on the R.R. I never had to re-rail anything. We did however have to isolate the front end of a 15th Class Garratt once when I was still a fireman.

Away from this a bit
We had a driver at St Blazey called Dennis Mugford a real gent and he never had a failed train untill his very last week of service.
Now that takes a bit of believing but i assure you it is true.
Like i say he was a true gent and six months after retirement he died :( :(.

ccmmick.