Oversized washing machine!

Last week it was clearing vegetation at the Rocks by Rail Museum but this week it was a chance to use the oversized washing machine to do some ballast washing. Now I generally like to keep away from washing machines as close contact with them can lead to all sorts of unreasonable domestic expectations about me using them from Mrs. Woody. However supersize the machine and put it in a railway setting - well that is a completely different situation that I like to be involved in.

It may look somewhat Heath Robinson in nature but the system is sheer brilliance. The basis of the system is an old cement mixer with a drum of about 4 to 6 cubic meters capacity. Dirty ballast is loaded into it via the hopper at the top.

Add some water from the nearby handy water container that was previously a 14 ton molasses tanker

Let the drum rotate for a few minutes. Put the drum into reverse so that the ballast comes out and it spills down the screen deck where it gets a bit more of a hose down into the waiting front bucket of the JCB. There are two wheel barrows under the screen which collect all the fine material that falls away from the ballast so that it can be reused elsewhere on site. They fill up more or less with each wash cycle and with added water weigh a ton - I know from experience now! It is surprising just how dirty and contaminated ballast can become.

Having been washed the ballast then gets transferred into the nearby Trout ballast wagon ready to be spread around the tracks. I do have a gravel driveway at home which looks a bit dirty - wonder if Mrs. W would notice if I used the washing machine..........