The Basingstoke Canal Railway

Lodge Copse - Is your track level? [photo: David Millett] Stan Meller: After the dredger had been moved to Lodge Copse, the track at Colt Hill was taken up. They had an old bridging pontoon I'd been familiar with just after the war, and the panels of track were moved on this up to the Lodge Copse site and laid. I went down a couple of weeks later and they were busily engaged in rerailing skips which had repeatedly become derailed..... I watched this and realised what was happening; I couldn't explain it to them as they wouldn't listen.

"Your track's not level". "It must be it's on the towpath!" "It's not level! Your track's on a slope and that's why your skips are......". "Oh no it can't be that.....".

INFORMATION Lodge Copse is further up the canal from Odiham in Hampshire.

So I went down the following week with a spirit level and some bits of wood. And as I was going along with the spirit level they all started laughing when they saw it, but the track was 2 1/2" sloping on the 2ft gauge. And I was jacking it up and putting bits of wood under (one rail was lower than the other). They couldn't believe that it could be "cos the towpath is level, er, wasn't it.....". Was it hell! After I'd done a little bit they found the skips weren't falling off anymore. So somebody decided this guy knew what he was talking about. After that a spirit level was used all the way. [photo: David Millett] [photo: David Millett] Next thing was they had these points in and they'd got little short sidings going in to where this old sewage works used to be. Everything was gone from the sewage works except this bit of ground. They had these sidings going in there and they kept putting a new siding in as we moved along. They got to a point where there was a little ditch at the edge of the plot, and the mud was running into this ditch and poor old Roger Thomas was doing everything he could to stop it. I said tear up half a dozen of those shrubs and lay them alongside.

After several hours of repeating it, they finally did tear up half a dozen shrubs, laid them, and amazingly the mud stopped running, the shrubs caught it. Stan's idea works! But it wasn't my idea at all - it was George Stephenson's..... When he was building the track across Chat Moss, he had the same trouble - mud. So he laid a bedding of shrubs, and the railway track across Chat Moss still runs on those to this day. After that I was consulted about what we did..... Stephenson's Rocket (Based on an interview with Stan Meller, November 1998) NEXT - Swan cutting BACK

Last updated February 2000