We said we’d get it finished today and we certainly did.
You can see from pic the large radius of the curve, requiring around 50 14.5m lengths of 80lb rail to complete.
All spiking and a first tamp to support all the sleepers was finished by this afternoon, so we can now set our sights on the low leg, with first half planned for next week and the rest after Easter.
Here you can see the tamper squeezing ballast under a sleeper near the end of the job, the ballast here is still very much VR gravel and loco ash, holding up amazing well but starting to show signs of clumping and holding water… A bit of a hint a mud hole could appear here before too many years.
You can also see how little material we have left to lift and tamp the sleepers with, once our re-railing is complete, a sizeable amount of ballast will be needed on most of the line to keep it in good order for years to come.
VGR Civil Blog 