Saturday 9th saw a good squad assemble in anticipation of much visible progress with our 12 tonne Rail Crane, alas it broke down almost immediately, necessitating Nathan to make a wee trip to Inverness to get a part sorted/made.  Mid afternoon recommencement of the big lift  and this was the scene at close of play at a late 6pm! Thanks to John for photos and of course all that attended. By Thursday 14th Georgie and I believe Fergus had been busy rebuilding the switch recorded above at the start of another mid week day with a good turnout (no pun intended!) Our aim to inse ..read more

Sunday 2nd March saw a brave John doing his second day in a row and Richard his THIRD on the PWay  John reports - 3 hours of digging out more ballast and another two lengths of removing the dreadful elastic spikes all but killed them, so they were very grateful to see Rob turn up to assist. Alas the Colmar Road Rail machine wasn't able to slew the track, even under Georgie's expert handling --------------------------------. Wednesday saw Fergus and Georgie in a bitingly cold but dry wind, coax the trusty Muscleman (above) back into life to continue slewing, alas it did burst a pipe ..read more

Georgie got a new very handy attachment for our Road Rail Vehicle - a clamshell bucket able to scoop the ballast in between the sleepers - saving a lot of manual back breaking shovelling as photo'd by John officially on the Grantown Extension on Saturday 17th February It made digging out the plain line easy  alas the switch and crossing still problematic requiring the manual sweat of John, Richard and Ian - 180 feet plain line dug and 2/3rds of the switch.  ------------------------- Yesterday me and Mike had a couple of hours digging almost to the nosing of the crossing bu ..read more

Small but capable squad met at Boat of Garten on Saturday  and Georgie said the dreaded words - "a bit of ballast tidying boys" All headed out to Kinchurdy Straight and proceeded to tidy ballast and create decent cesses  possibly the last, for the time being.    Thanks to Georgie, Andrew, Fergus and Mike for photo/info -------------------------------- The following Saturday saw the start of a new project - the replacement of the run-round switch at the North end of Broomhill Loop and replace four panels of track beyond. Commencing at Boat of Garten.  Big eno ..read more

Sometime ago now - 9th December 2023  - Georgie says to us "a bit of slewing boys", she gave Fergus detailed instruction on how to operate the slewing jack as he had never had the pleasure before (above) and I was on the lifting jack, with Georgie sighting. Process was - I put jacking pole on railhead slowly walking towards Georgie until indicated to stop with direction of slew, I jack up track vertically, Fergus digs a perfectly angled hole in ballast below opposite rail and heaves the slewing jack under it and starts pumping the handle to hydraulically slew the track horizontally ..read more

As anticipated a large squad assembled at Boat of Garten on Saturday, in rather damp but milder weather,  our P'Way train took the Squad to the worksite at the Aviemore end of Kinchurdy straight, preceded by the Jacker Packer, which John Sinclair our Plant Manager has been doing a long term re-build on, he was fortunately on site for a couple of teething problems - loose ignition lead and fuses and Ian managed to operate the machine the whole day, Fergus being its attendant, with Mike and Martin manually packing the inevitable missed sleepers due to the joints and Georgie levelli ..read more

Mid October saw some off-track activity by Fergus, in the form of strengthening a considerable length of our boundary fence behind Broomhill Station House to beyond the Station Cottages, by initially strenuously hammering in new posts manually with his mell.     Fortunately the local Farmer took pity on him and quickly supplied the proper tool for the job and in no time at all, the pair of them had the posts flying in! Many thanks to both.   Meanwhile the ballast tidying yet again continued on the Kinchurdy Relay, by chance the first fo ..read more

Report/Photos from John - "Despite the Met Office Amber warning of heavy rain being as close as Aviemore, a good number of volunteers still assembled at Boat of Garten on Saturday to receive our tasking from Georgie - the intended re-sleepering was deferred, as she was yet again called upon for Operational duties at Aviemore. Plan B was tidying ballast at Kinchurdy, we did linger in the dry comfort of our BG/Messroom listening to the rain battering off its roof and wondering about our sanity!   But in the end, some had travelled considerable distances to get here, so we headed ..read more

Saturday saw Fergus, Peter, Iain and Michael meet up at a rather busy Boat of Garten due to the Steam Gala. Once Georgie was finally located, she dispatched them to "tidy up a bit of ballast boys"!   Yes you've guessed where - Kinchurdy half mile straight, Iain reports that he found it knackering but plenty trains passing meant plenty breaks! Thanks to him for photo and it looks pretty good to me, well done. Later John having completed his track inspection captured Georgie giving more instructions, this time to the driver of the other visiting steam locomotive, which was on fr ..read more

Saturday saw another extra P'Way day semi planned - plan A was to continue fishplate oiling from where Fergus, Michael and Richard had finished off two weeks ago - which was amazingly more or less the start of the 1/2 mile Kinchurdy relay (which we had been told to skip for now as newer stronger fishplates are planned soon) alas the rain was too heavy for the task and I did not want the dirty fishplate oil sloshing about in my car anyway! Plan B was to go and dig out the remaining 15 sleepers at the South end of the Relay, so Mike, Peter and myself set off to the Kinchurdy P'Way hut where ..read more