Ballast Tamping Locomotive
 

My home backs on to the Blackburn-Hellifield line at Clitheroe and was woken at 1.30 am today to the sound of a repetitive "whoosh, bang, crash, wallop" and an uncomfortable house shaking. I thought I was experiencing the same kind of misfortune that has been witnessed recently by the people of New Zealsnd.
I immediately went to the window and saw for the first time a tamping locomotive with support coach, all lit-up and lifting track and pushing ballast back under the rails.
Can anyone enlighten me as to the background of this unique locomotive, where it is stabled and how often it is used to perform such a task?
Must have done the trick as the 06.20 and 06.50 dmus were a lot quieter.
BTW, just as I was getting back to sleep the darned nocturnal thing came back on the up line performing the very same.
Very bleary-eyed this morning!

Is this the sort of thing you mean?
http://www.ontrackplant.com/photo/75407

Simply put the machine works along the track either working to a previously inputted design on the built in computer system or it has done its own measuring and working to the results puts the track to the best line for the ruling speed limit.

The clamps underneath grip the rails and lift them and slew them as required then the tamping tools squeeze and vibrate the ballast to hold the sleepers in the required position.. the process is then repeated over and over again.
Some machines do 1 sleeper at a time others can do up to 3 sleepers.

There are other machines that may also be seen such as:-
Regulators that profile the ballast.
Stoneblowers similar to tampers but they inject measured amounts of chippings under the sleepers instead of packing ballast.
If you go to the home page of the website for the photo there is much more to see.

Hi Bryan.
Thanks for the reply and taking interest.
Yep, that's the fire-breathing creature that woke me up.
Nice bit of kit and no doubt doing an essential piece of maintenance, however, would have preferred to have seen it in daylight!

You really got it bad then they are one of the most noisy machines going and when they are used at night it seems to be louder (especially when it's frosty)

Got to agree with Bryan about the website I'm a subscriber to it as and when I get to report sightings that is

One Sunday, I was on a possession which ran from Weaverthorpe Signal box up distant signal on the Scarborough Line towards the SB.
This line had just been relayed with use of the Rail Track Auto Ballaster with 10 loaded hoppers.
When we took the train onto the new railway the train speed was kept to below 5mph as newly laid track is all over the place till the new ballast is on it and has been tamped.
When dropping stone you can soon run off 10 loaded tucks in no time at all.
When we had got shut of the stone, I walked back along the down line to the distant signal where I'd left me van.
I saw that the un tamped relaid track was as rough as a ploughed field. The tamper came on the worksite and with one pass it had the formation looking well, after the second pass the new laid track was near on like a billiard table.
After the tamper had done its work, the Auto Ballaster was empty the train went back to HM and was left it in the up yard.
It would have taken a gang of men a good week to do what the Tamper did in a good couple of hours.
To get the van down to the distant signal I had to drive off the A64, through a farm yard and park near to a big pond.
The van was a White Vauxhall Astra, with a good heater and reclining seats. Just right to while away a few hours.
At HM we called the Astra Vans BEV's which stood for ballast escape vehicles.

Its quite likely I was there as I have been on a fair few relays in that area.
Either working with the dozer blading off the ballast surface to level or measuring in the new track as it got relaid.
Worked with the tampers as well.

When I was at Dinas? on the WHR a couple of weekends ago, I saw their two foot gauge tamper....

does a very neat job! Consistent and quicker than 'by hand'

Many years ago now, at one of the FfR galas the PW dept had it on display, correction, doing demos.....quite something to watch (but rather noisy!)

I spent quite a lot of Saturday nights and Sundays on the Scarborough line.
We started at Strensall and worked our way down to the river at Malton, then upto Weaverthorpe and past the AHB xing by the golf club.
I did a stint at Seamer running the trains round in the loop from the down line onto the up.
The RR loop at Seamer would take 53SLU's if we got owt bigger I would go down to Scarborough and RR the train in the excursion platform where the turn table is .
We took the whole train down number 1 Platform and then shoved the train into the siding.
When the engine RR train it backed into number 1 platform and back upto Seamer.
Some Saturday nights there were 4 or 5 trains to deal with.
As I was the only Team member I could only be in one place at a time, and rushing never entered my head, it takes as long as it takes.
The long trains were the auto ballasters.
These trucks are massive when you are on the floor looking at them.
I was not trained on dropping stone from the AB's so they had to send someone out to do that job.
We signed on at 20:00hrs to travel out to Seamer and left the possession at 0600hrs to drive back to HM and sign off at 08:00hrs hence the name of BEV's cam to be.(or sooner.)

We have had a tamper on the EVR all this week to tamp the section from Idridgehay to Duffield (5 miles). It is due to finish to-day. Here are a couple of photos from Wednesday near milepost 136 between Shottle and Hazelwood.

The results achieved by the tamper on the line at Clitheroe are quite remarkable. We live close to Horrocksford Junction and the heavy cement trains from Castle Cement, which use this stretch of line, appear to have caused the rails to sink quite deep into ballast. To the point where the ballast was covering the sleepers and almost up to rail top level on the outside of the rails. The tamper corrected and realigned this problem within a few minutes.
Speaking of the cement trains, the class 66s which pull them work extremely hard to get them moving off the falling gradient and are most impressive. I would dearly have loved to see and hear a 9F do the same - the pyrotechnics and audio would have been fantastic.