Re-railing

The UP leg of tangent 20-21 was our victim today, with 19 lengths of 80lb rail installed.

Clive and Mal hard at work de-dogging. As it’s been a while since our last re-railing, the power pack used to drive the spike puller proved temperamental to start, resulting in quite a bit of lost time.

The other snag today was our petrol rattle gun for removing screws wouldn’t play the game, we have others but they require more manual handling, hence only achieving 19 rails instead of our usual 27 or 30.

By morning tea we were starting to make headway, with 60lb coming out and 80 going in.

Norm and Mal carefully installing and aligning sleeper plates.

The end take 1. This was a logical spot to call it quits initially, however on closer inspection we decided to go a further 3 80lb rails as it just worked out much tidier and simpler. (there was already some short sections of 80lb in here making for an awkward join up.

The short bits of 80lb were installed some years ago to allow for insulated joints when it looked like the crossing would get flashing lights.

After the usual run through of every third sleeper, the gang followed up with the drilling and starting of the dog spikes on the intermediate sleepers.

Often we do a tamping run before this, however the way things worked out today it was quicker to just bar up the sleepers that needed lifting.

We’ll be back out to finish the job tomorrow, lots of spiking still to do to complete today’s work. All going well we will hopefully even get a few more rails replaced too, even just another 3 will make a big difference next time we’re back here.