New road-rail loader: The GWR has acquired a Colmar 'Road-Rail' machine along with a host of useful accessories and attachments such as grabs, buckets and a flail head. These machines can operate on road wheels as well as on rail, as the name suggests. Such machines are an essential railway maintenance and construction tool and the GWR's example is already proving to be extremely useful. The picture shows the machine in shown in rail-mounted mode assisting with sleeper* replacement at Toddington station on 21st February. It will mainly be used by the Permanent Way department and will be particularly useful for reaching parts of the line otherwise difficult to access, as well as significantly speeding up and simplifying many routine maintenance tasks on the railway.

Changes to the 'north headshunt': Regular visitors used to watching trains arrive from Cheltenham and seeing the locomotive being uncoupled and 'running round' the coaches, will notice that this task will take a little longer from now on. This is because the Permanent Way department have changed the layout of what is known by staff as the 'north headshunt' to accommodate the future main line to Laverton and Broadway. A new left-hand turnout* (or point) has been installed about 100 yards further north than the original right -hand one close to the station and the signal controlling access to the platforms has also been moved.

Tamping: One of the two tamping* machines delivered to Toddington in April 2007 has been hard at work improving the quality of the main running line.  These highly complex machines, built by Plasser in Austria are designed to level, slew and compact the ballast beneath the sleepers using laser and computer technology. The pictures, taken by Paul Fuller, show class 07 tamper no. DR73315 while there is a short film on Youtube by Paul of the machine working and you can view it here. Meanwhile, the Department's least-favourite job, greasing fishplates* and sleeper replacement has been continuing, following a rolling programme to ensure regular attention to all joints on the track.

* For these and other terms used on the railway, check out our Jargon Buster