The good news is that we managed to insert a further 157 sleepers in tangent 7-8 earlier this week. We also got most of tangent 8-9 tamped up… Before we broke the digger.
Unfortunately a seal in the main swivel coupling (the bit that let’s the top and bottom slew around) has failed, rendering the digger largely inoperable.
After a fun day in the pouring rain of limping it off the track (just lucky it was parked on level ground close to a roadway!) we managed to get it floated back to Maldon and into the workshop undercover for Bazz to fix.
The afternoon wasn’t wasted, as we had to start the Y class to pull wagons out of the shed, we decided it was well overdue a battery charge so we did a run to Muckleford to bring back the civil train ready for loading more conc. sleepers near Woodlocks Ln, which will do with the Hyundai while the takeuchi is fixed.
The takeuchi is likely to out for some time, so check the workdays on the blog as we might divert onto some different work for a while.
Tomorrow will be clipping up the sleepers in tangent 7-8 as long as the weather allows! It’s forecast to be an okay morning so it may be a half day. Meeting Maldon 8am or near Rifle Range Bridge from 8.30am – bring your raincoat.
VGR Civil Blog 