Nottingham University GRACE project

11th November 2009

Roof laboratory and test track

Cromar White Ltd won the prestigious contract to install a 'dog-bone' shaped seven and a quarter inch gauge railway on the roof of the new GRACE building, Nottingham University which has been designed to create a state of the art laboratory. It has a series of stable monuments which are supported through the whole of the building and into the foundations. These will provide high tolerance platforms for continuously operating GNSS receivers used for both earth movement research and to provide support to the RTK Network project. The roof will be surfaced with a multipath reducing surface and obstructions have been designed to be at a minimum.

A unique facility of the "roof lab" will be a stable track system which will allow experiments of a kinematic nature over a know trajectory. This will be a wireless controlled system with high precision repeatability.

For more information on the GRACE department, please visit http://www.grace.ac.uk/

Rother Valley Country Park

6th October 2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsAQRU4F8EI&feature=player_embedded

On 15th August 2009 the Rother Valley Steam Railway(RVSR) opened to the public at the Rother Valley Country Park, Sheffield. This followed an intense four week installation from start to finish. The track is 7¼" gauge, 800 metres long with a loop at each end(70-75' radius). the track is made from Cromar White(CW) 4lb a yard, 27mm, steel rail and re-cycled plastic sleepers. CW won the contract to install and supply the railway, from marking out, to ground work, to track laying, to carriage supply to installing electrics, to building station platforms, to supplying locomotives and rolling stock. The locos will consist of one steam engine and one diesel engine. The rolling stock consists of seven CW sit astride carriages and one CW invalid coach and there are plans to add a wagon for transporting child buggies. The bogies are of a new design which all have vacuum braking. The engine shed consists of one 40' container and one 20' container joined together. There are three lines running into the shed.  This has been a very ambitious project and much midnight oil has been burned and many miles done between CW HQ in Angelsey and Sheffield. The whole installation has been project managed by Tony Martin(Technical Director CW), as well as him being very much hands on. There are currently three sets of sprung points installed.