After another long day and lots of hard work, we’ve almost completed the turnout.
After dropping out all the jewellery it was into drilling and screwing.
Which before long saw us with two very straight rails, ideal for the straight leg of the turnout!
And in no time at all we’d dropped in the curved closure rails.
Carefully aligned to as per the turnout offset diagram (to within 1/2mm!).
Once the curved lead was fixed, the curved stock rails were moved into position with great precision thanks to the new grabs.
It would be no word of a lie to say these saved us in excess of 2 hours work over this project, just because of their incredible versatility and amazing controlability.
The final bolts of the day being done up. It’s fairly heavy work in turnouts, everything’s big, the equipment required is heavy and the heights are always awkward.
But when that’s the end result, it makes it all worth while.
It’s not quite finished, but there’s very little to go. Only the curved stock rail to fix down and point lever assembly/ spreader bars to install.
Next Monday to Thursday will be at Korumburra, helping out our friends at Coal Creek. As such there won’t be a workday on Thursday, but if all goes well we’ll be at Castlemaine on Friday to finish off this turnout.
Don’t forget Civil Saturdays is on tomorrow, at Castlemaine signal box. From 8.30am.
VGR Civil Blog 