St Helens Station
Dill on track laying duties at St Helens. New paving slabs have just been delivered ready for the platform.
St Helens (or ‘St Helen Auckland’, to give it its full name) is the HLR's eastern terminus, at the lower end of the Gaunless valley. (See map in the History section.) It's also the terminus that is being built at the lowest part of the railway, alongside the pond.
As explained in the Planning section, it was meant to be the last part of the railway that got built. But because the pond edge needed rebuilding, it is being done sooner rather than later. I guess that eventually the two ends will get connected. What a way to run a railway! Progress has been quite slow, as with most things on the HLR. But things are beginning to come together and it's got to the point where it's possible to run round a train and do a bit of shunting, even if there's nowhere to take the train afterwards!
This series of pictures gives some idea of progress so far at St Helens.
1. This was the area pretty much as we inherited it; before work started, and before the pond started to leak! Between the path and the pond was a raised area, forming a sloping side to the pond. This was covered in ‘crazy paving’ and a good deal of rather ugly concrete.
But during the summer of 2002 it became necessary to rescue the pond before it all drained away. Investigation had revealed that the roots of some of the reeds had penetrated the neoprene pond liner and, of course, I made matters worse by disturbing the roots that were blocking the holes!
2. To replace the whole liner would have been a major undertaking, so we decided to change the shape of the pond slightly and make the affected side rather more vertical so that all the holes were above the water level. This meant removing the area of ‘crazy-paving’, which left quite a mess.
The long-and-short of it was that St Helens station ‘happened’ rather sooner than expected. It means that there will be two ends of the railway, about 11” apart vertically, with nothing in between!
But the first thing that had to go was the very large pampas grass which had come to completely dominate the area and obstruct the path.
3. The ‘crazy paving’ was lifted to reveal the pond liner, which could then be mended.
This was achieved by pushing the side of the pond inwards slightly and building a more vertical side using concrete blocks and soft builders' sand to provide ‘padding’ for the liner, as illustrated in this diagram.
4. A low wall was built alongside the path in a rather wiggly shape as you can see in this picture. This was to allow the flower bed on the other side of the path to be re-aligned with a curved edge. (The reason for this will be revealed later!) The gap between the wall and the pond edge was then filled with rubble and a rough layer of concrete added to within a couple of inches of the top of the brick wall. Some hardboard shuttering was used on the other side to create a vertical face.
This picture shows the state of affairs when most of this first layer of concrete was in place and some concrete blocks were being arranged at the far end to carry the line out of the station. Doing it this way meant that the foundations could go down to solid ground, even though the level would eventually be made up to the top of the blocks.
5. I'd planned to top the rough concrete layer off with a much finer layer made with sharp sand rather than ‘ballast’ as this is much easier to drill into later and gives a smoother surface for track laying. (Thanks for the tip, Tony!)
In this picture, this layer is partly laid. The odd shape is just where I ran out of mix, but was done that way to avoid a join across what would be the bay platform road. The first few concrete blocks at the station throat are now in place and the ground made up level with their tops.
The amount of space available pretty much dictated the size of the station and a track plan was designed to suit. When I started, the area looked absolutely huge; when I tried to fit in all the bits I wanted, it seemed rather small.
I've ended up with what is actually a very small station, but is, for the HLR at least, quite big enough. My original plan was to have the platform at the back, alongside the pond, but it just wouldn't fit that way. So it all got flipped over and the platform is at the front, by the path. This leaves room for a respectable run-round loop, extra bay platform (which in reality I suspect will be used for steaming-up and loco maintenance!), goods shed and turntable. Provision of the latter is probably a little excessive for such a small station served by tank engines, but it does have a purpose! There's a separate page about making the turntable which explains its raison d'être, so I won't go into that here. The ‘kick-back’ siding parallel to the main running line was a bit of an afterthought and there's not quite enough trackbase to support it! There'll be a bit added when the turntable gets installed, but the far end will probably just get laid in ballast on bare earth. That way, I can grow all sorts of things over the track and make it disappear into the undergrowth!
Apart from the area around the turntable, most of the civil engineering was complete last year (2003). But not much seemed to get done during the summer, what with Silver wedding celebrations followed by a spell in hospital. (Not connected!) I just spent some time recovering by gently fiddling and planning.
The last addition to the building work was a ‘retaining wall’ down to the side of the pond to make everything look tidy and to stop the little people falling headlong. The very last picture on the page about building the snow plough has a very wintry view of this wall. [But don't think too hard about the date when this picture was taken, else you'll realise that the snow is very effectively hiding the lack of any track!] Unfortunately, I somehow managed to get the cement mix in one batch completely wrong and after the first frost got at it, a section of the wall had to be demolished and now awaits replacement.
But this year, track laying eventually got under way. This was a bit fiddly as there's hardly a straight line in the whole station and everything was lined up by eye and endlessly adjusted until it looked right. Track was fixed down with 3/4" No6 brass screws (buy in bulk, not in packs of 10 at an exorbitant price!) into plastic plugs in the concrete. [Size 4 screws would have been better, but ScrewFix seem to have stopped selling them in this length.]
At first, I had problems keeping the track to my carefully adjusted alignment because the holes in the concrete would tend to wander slightly. The trick is to mark the position where the hole should go in the concrete, then drill the hole before making a corresponding hole in the sleeper. That way, even if the screw ends up slightly off centre in the sleeper, everything will stay in alignment. Before tightening, a small spirit level was used to ensure the track was perfectly flat across the rails and packing used as necessary. Longitudinal undulations aren't so much of a problem, lateral twisting is!
Most of the station layout is now complete and waiting for ballast, platforms, buildings, and all the other bits and pieces needed to bring it all to life. And, of course, the trains still need somewhere to go to!
October 2004: Some progress was finally made at St Helens in the form of more concrete. The awkward corner between the station throat and the pond was finally cleared and room made for the turntable mentioned above. So far, it's as far as the first layer of rough concrete. The top surface will be added as soon as I can get to the gravel pit to fetch some more sharp sand. A hole was left for the turntable well - a spare plant pot saucer was used to make sure it was big enough. The small hole nearby will be excavated further so that a small tree can be planted to break up the monotony of all that concrete.
By the end of the month, the edge of the pond had been completed, making everything look much tidier than it has done for a long time. (See picture on the left.) Some ‘stepping stones’ were incorporated to allow access to the pond without having to tread on the track.