Today, despite being very cold and a bit wet, was quite productive.
The rails dropped out last week were bolted into strings, of varying numbers, as we ended up rejecting one quite bent rail and that upset our nice system!
The lubrication at each joint was applied liberally, as the rails were wet, it doesn’t coat very well, hence lots in the hope that enough will end up in the right spots.
The bolting up crew was hot on the heals of the lubricators, with all this done and dusted by morning tea. It was a little quicker than usual with only 20 rails now dropped out.
Fish plates and dog spikes were distributed next, along with the jewellery needed for steel sleepers.
After lunch the task of collecting all the broken up 60lb rail jewellery was undertaken.
All the fish plates have been nicely stacked for easy moving on pallets, with all the old bolts placed (poured from the bucket) into a drum ready to go to scrap.
We then repeated this around the corner at curve 20, where the rail was broken up long ago, but we never quite got around to the jewellery.
This afternoon was spent breaking up the remaining strings of 60lb along curve 20, yet to be stacked, but that’s a good job for just the digger one day.
We’ve only got about 6 km of 60lb left to break up now!
We will be running a gang tomorrow for those who are interested, however the weather forecast is not looking favourable, so we’ll have to wait and see how much we can get done.
Meeting Maldon 8am with work depending on the weather.
VGR Civil Blog 