Another eventful day, with concrete sleepers.
It started off as a sleeper train, with 176 sleepers dropped off at curve 11, we had all this including the marking up of the 1 in 3 to be replaced well finished by morning tea.
Around 60 sleepers were unscrewed, had anchors removed etc… ready for the concrete to go in.
32 were inserted and tamped up ready for tomorrow’s trains at a very reduced speed (8 km/h).
We’ve distributed about half of the concrete sleepers on site, the rest will occur Thursday or maybe Friday morning.
Although Thursday is potentially wet we’ve taken a gamble and plowed on, as if worst comes to worst we won’t really have a lot of work to do keep trains running over the weekend.
Rain / hale or shine meeting at Maldon 8am on Thursday.
VGR Civil Blog 
Another fantastic effort in continually improving the railway by reducing future maintenance liability.
I’m curious about the 1 in 3 replacement. I ask, because I’m also curious if there’s other sleepers remaining that are life expired that might not be every 3rd one?As such, is the replacement of those not more important than perhaps every 3rd that may just be in satisfactory condition??
I would envisage this still means another replacement effort later on, but perhaps every 3rd being concrete and the line tamped, provides the necessary strength required for the time being?
Just curious.
Either way, it’s a fantastic effort.
LikeLike
Hi David, you are very right, we are not necessarily getting the worst of the worst with this method (strangely we often do though!) , however the 1 in 3 is forcing the gauge to become very rigid, meaning the intermediates are primarily weight bearing. And once tamped up the poorer intermediates are not proving to be an issue with our low axle loads.
As all of thar section of the line was laid at the same time, all sleepers are nearing the end of their life anyhow.
We’re hopeful of getting more concretes but as yet can’t be certain, so were trying make the best of the situation. We can use any high quality sleepers removed during these works to replace any life expired, it’s no less work but overall it should equate to less urgent works needed as this whole section is aging at the same rate, it’ll ensure we don’t run into areas of weak track.
And hopefully we get more concrete in the mean time and all replacements will be done with those negating any double replacements.
(however considering until now we’ve only be replacing with 2nd hand timber anyhow, we’re really no worse off either way).
That’s our logic and so far it’s proving very effective, the other idea is that with this method it’ll mean the re-railing when it occurs should be incredibly rapid.
Cheers,
Will
LikeLike