Today saw the remainder of the pandrol adaptor’s fitted in curve 13. 
We even dragged out the hydraulic drill to help speed up the job, quite a bit easier and quicker than the hand drills, but a bit more cumbersome to chance drill bits. 
The spiking hammer completes the knocking in job very well. 
The adaptor’s are each labelled with either a G or F. G meaning Gauge side of the rail and F meaning Field side of the rail. The only real difference is the depth of the hook, F’s are longer to match the thicker shoulder of the sleeper plate on the Field side.
Once the lokspikes were in, it was out with the old spikes and in the shoulders. 
The trolley mounted spike puller made easy work of removing the spikes. 
A gentle tap with a sledge settles the adaptor into its new home.
Once we’d completed the works on Curve 13, we made use of the afternoon to attend to turnout maintenance at Muckleford and Maldon.
Particular attention was paid to thoroughly cleaning the chairs and lubricating all the appropriate signalling components, with everything operating much more smoothly after our efforts. 
A few other little odd jobs such as correcting this misaligned joint were attended to. It’s nice to be able to tend to all these small jobs that we’ve not had time to for months.
Tomorrow’s weather is looking very wet, so we’ve called off the workday as there is little we can achieve if it rains as predicted! Next week we’re planning bridge work at Winters Flat, however we’ll confirm which days that’ll be tomorrow.
VGR Civil Blog 