Turnout

Making the new turnout part of the track, rather than just a fancy standalone feature, was the focus of today.

Joining the new build up to the existing, required a good amount of pre-work discussion, but in no time the action plan was formed and we were into it.

First up some ballast preventing the job was moved, followed by laying out sleepers and rail.

We’ve been able to make use of a few 80 to 94lb junction rails that we’ve had lying around, a very nice way of joining different rail types.

Given the timber sleepers we re-used were in relatively good condition, but had been spiked in a few locations previously, we installed the rail using the recently featured pandrol adaptor’s.

The day might come when rails magically fit into a gap without cutting… But we’re not holding our breath.

Once the rails were cut to length, everything just fell into place and straight away it looked like it was meant to be.

Thankfully we had enough people to have two tasks on the go, one lot fastening up while the other started lifting and tamping the turnout.

It’s amazing just how much more finished the turnout looks with some rock on it. The background view here is the slewing of the existing turnout track to line up with the turnout, which it did very nicely. A little bit of tweaking required, but it’s pretty good.

By day’s end the closures had been cut and roughly installed to join the turntable road up once more.

Tomorrow’s crew should comfortably complete the join up and final tamp of the turnout, ready for traffic.

Meeting at Castlemaine from 8.30am.