Railway Work

[ajc]

Hi all, what kind of work is the vegitation clearance on railways, would you have to be a climber or would you be fine with cs30 & cs31 ?

[Ian150482]

Never done it to be honest. I know you will need your PTS, think thats what its called. (personal track saftey).

[Mr Ed]

Depends on whether your climbing or just doing ground based work. Either way you will need a PTS.

[hesslemount]

You'll need PTS Personal Track Safety (as mentioned above) and to take a fairly strict medical checking sight, earing, drug use, alcoholism etc. Then you'll need to be sponsored on a 4 day course to get your PTS. I got mine at Martin's.

 

The work's basically wood butchering doing all undergrowth (bramble etc) to 3 metre clearance from peripheral lines and trees to 6 metre - sky's the limit. What this interprets to is some lovely trees heavily spiked to cut branches to 6 metres. Rather than climbing properly with ropes they prefer to spike for speed. My main problem with this is the tree's gonna be more prone to decay this way meaning a return journey to do the tree again. However the big companies such as Network Rail and subbies such as Martin's don't seem to care about the tree just the 3 and 6 metre clearance. Sorry if I seem to be bad mouthing companies there but it is from experience not heresay.

 

Don't get me wrong though it's hard graft and very physical which is great (for some) but the arb' side of things leaves a hell of a lot to be desired.

[Matt McAulay]

hesslemount got it in one, got my pts monday, tuesday next work could well be online by wednesday if the boss man gets hold of bridgeons.