DEVELOPMENT – WATER and SEWERAGE (Step 1.1)
Water
and Sewerage (uploaded
The Transport and Works Act Order, the all-important
legal document which gives the railway company the right to run trains was an
expensive piece of paper, and we knew it would cost a lot. The trouble was, we didn’t know how much, and
neither did our parliamentary agents, but we knew that it was far too much for
us to raise unaided. So we went to
Torfaen County Borough Council with a request for help. In response (though not before considerable
delay) a £25,000 award was made from the Rural Key Fund, a fund supported by
European ‘Objective 1’ funding. The
Company matched this with £5000 of its own.
Within an hour of the award being announced, work on the TWAO was
started. Although it was another
eighteen months before the TWAO was finally granted, it fled through the public
objection phase so that few if any additional costs were added, and it was clear within nine months that the
legal costs would be barely half those expected, as much of the preparatory
quasi-legal research work had been done ‘in-house’.
It had always been our plan to use any ‘loose
change’ to bring fresh drinking water onto site, and to provide a sewerage
system so that we could install proper lavatories for our visitors. Strange though it might seem now, there were
voices within the railway who would rather have spent the money on something
more directly related to railways, and particularly locomotives, but our minds
were made up.
How to bring water onto site was a very vexed
technical question. Our first notion was
to connect to the main pipe on the Brynmawr road about 580m away, but this
would have meant crossing the headwaters of the Avon Llwyd. A bridge was a possibility but protecting
the pipe from frost at 1250ft ASL was always going to be a problem – especially
with vandals in the area. Boring UNDER
the river was a possibility, which is usually no more than a stream, but
quickly into a raging torrent during wet weather. This plan was finally abandoned on advice of
Dwr Cymru (Welsh Water) who suggested that the pressure in the main was already
critically low. Plan B however demanded
that not only was the water brought a distance of about 715m from a point at
the edge of the nearby industrial estate, but that it would have to increase in
height by 23m. Nevertheless this is what
Dwr Cymru recommended, and who were we to argue? Another recommendation – nay, demand – was
that the pipe would have to be buried below that demanded by regulation in
order to protecte the pipe from frost.
After a few weeks we were able to identify contractors to undertake the
work. Work started on 9 November 2006
with great gusto, even with a trench over 1.5m deep. In appalling weather conditions, and in
ground conditions that were even worse, the work was completed in three
weeks. Then came the pantomime of
involvement by Dwr Cymru and their contractors.
Did we get our water by Christmas?
No! By Easter? No! Finally by Early May bank holiday, with hours
to go, water finally arrived on site.
The pipeline is
superimposed in orange on the image above, and passes from close to Bridge 14
(New Pit Road bridge), past Bridge 13 (Old Pit Road bridge) and close to Bridge
12 (the Rail–over-rail bridge), along the eastern flank of the secure site,
before dividing at the northern end. To
the east (upwards in the image) it goes to our machine shop, whilst to the west
it goes to the Refreshment Room. Not shown is a further short extension to the
north to our lavatories
What a a saga!.
But having got water into site, we then had to find a way of letting it
out again! The answer came after making
enquiries to the Environment Agency who strongly recommended that we use a
‘Package Sewage Treatment Plant’, rather than spending a lot of money on long
foul drains to the main sewers. We
purchased one of these in the form of a ‘Biodigester’, and it was stored
temporarily on site, whilst we dug the hole into which it was to be
buried. We had however, once again,
underestimated the ferocity of winter weather, which, amongst other things, saw
the Biodigester blown around and bashed about a bit. So, without further delay we managed to get a
nearby a friendly contractor to dig a big hole for it, and to drop it in.
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Here is the
view from Bridge 13 (Old Pit Road bridge) of the trench. Heroic work by contractors in November
2006, and in appalling weather, was initially impressively rapid, but just
round the bend in this illustration on the uphill stretch the terrain
becoming extraordinarily difficult with rocks and colliery waste for a
distance of over 500m. At its worst a
4 metre stretch of solid concrete had to be broken through to complete the
work. Notwithstanding, three weeks
(and several sets of bucket teeth) later, the trench was complete. |
After being
battered by violent weather in January 2007, no time was lost in digging a
hole and burying the Biodigester. Here
it is seen being lowered into the hole by some obliging contractors who
should have been busy on the Coity Trail work! An angry sky gives warning that the
elements have not yet finished their winter assault upon both the railway and
its volunteers |
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Left: What a pickle! On 29 March, barely a week before the 2007 summer
season, there are clods of earth and holes everywhere. Centre right the Biodigester is now buried,
whilst in the foreground is the outflow from the biodigester to an
underground culvert. The
container-loos are to the left, whilst the long trench to the tearooms
stretches to the rear.! Right: By early June everything was functioning, and the outflow trench had
been filled. The brown foul drains are
all in place. To save both money and
to further boost our environmental credentials, the loos are flushed with
‘raw’ water from a nearby pond, whilst fresh water is used in the wash
handbasins, and, of course, the tearoom.
This explains the tangle of blue pipes of various sizes going hither
and thither. Things were further
complicated by the presence of new and existing electrical cables which also
were contained within the trench.
Uncertainty over the possibility of adding yet further facilities
delayed the filling of the hole but the work was completed later that year |
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Compared with burying the Biodigester, installing
the plastic pipes was easy, though the distance to the tearooms, the required
fall and the shallowness of the pipe led to some unusual design problems. Now, after a year of completely event free
operation it is difficult to believe the upheaval that accompanied the
installation, which, at the time, had been the largest project the railway had
undertaken. We still have to keep an eye
on the meter (which is right down in the road near to the New Pit Road bridge)
to ensure that freezing weather and a subsequent thaw does not give rise to a
leak, but its a small chore. The only
sign of the Biodigester at work is the quiet humming of the electrically
powered aeration pump, which has put the wind up several courting couples who
come into our car park at night for reasons other than enjoying trains!
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