The remaining section of re-railing on the Down leg of tangent 15-16 was tackled today and successfully completed!
Things didn’t start well… Some fairly localised rain decided to start just as we got to the site and continued right through till about 9am, so naturally we spent quite some time admiring the interior of which ever vehicle we managed to scramble into.
But before long and lots of eyes over the weather radar we decided to brave the rain and hope for a clearing. As we’d already removed some of the fastenings previously, the job of removing the old rail only took about an hour.
The first few 80lb rails in place.
By lunch we had all the new rail in place, all 15 lengths of 80lb and were well into dogging. Strangely we seemed to make very similar progress to days with the larger gangs despite only having 6 of us. Read into that what you will…. But we decided it must’ve been down to all the preparation on Tuesday.
The final rail being cut to size. We chose to make use of two smaller rails for our closure here rather than cropping a long one.
Mick and Clive working back up the hill finishing off the drilling and spiking.
By days end we’d managed to complete all spiking, clipping and tamping of the new rails. An effort we were all proud of. All that’s left is to collect all the old jewellery.
We’ll be out again tomorrow, this time preparing rails for the other leg at Muckleford. Any extra hands are very welcome as numbers are a little low at the moment. Meeting Maldon 8am or Muckleford from 8.30am.
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