7 June (Part 2) - No longer built like a brick outhouse
There are no trains through Abbey Wood again this weekend and the main task
has been to install the shell of a new electricity sub-station, so that cables
may be transferred from the old brick building before knocking it down and preparing for the realignment of the North Kent line.
The ‘boxes’ and some electrical equipment which will stand in the open to
facilitate cooling were delivered by lorry and the crane swung into action at
eleven o’clock on Saturday morning, however there was a snag. The hooks at the
end of the crane’s cables were too large to fit the eyes on the top of the tin
boxes. The site engineer was not at all happy with the crane contractor. One
might have expected a machine of that size to carry a box of useful bits and
pieces. There were never less than eleven men in attendance so it must have
been an expensive mistake.
After someone was sent to find some suitable shackles and a break for lunch work
recommenced at 1:30. Transferring the big bits across the railway line was child’s play but bolting the
small box (Photo 13 below) to the back of a bigger one (Photo 14) took more than an hour.
At five o’clock work ceased with one transformer left aboard the second delivery lorry overnight. It was
still there at 08:00 on Sunday with not an orange suit to be seen but by the time I returned at nine it was in place (Final Photo).
Whether the new sub-station is to supply both the old 750 volt line and the new
25kV system depends on who you ask, but given that the old brick building is no
more than half the size of the new it may be reasonable to assume it is for both.
Photos 1-6 below show some of the preparatory work. The trough around the main structures is to be
filled with shingle as part of the drainage system.
The isolated photo above is of work some half a mile east of Abbey Wood station, near Tunstall Way, which appears
to consist of digging holes and filling them in again. Probably some sort of ground condition exploration.
