Re-railing

Well on the first day of intensive re-railing, we’ve installed and bolted in 255m of 80lb rail, replacing old 60lb.

We stuffed around a bit, working out what the best processes/methods were but we’re still extremely happy and surprised by our efforts!

So today we remove all the fastening from the 60lb, swapped the rails over and we’ve clipped up the new rail at every concrete sleepers. The big digger proved very good at this task.

We’re yet to come back and fasten up the timber, but as the gauge is now held extremely well and everything is supporting the rail, if this doesn’t happen for a few weeks, it won’t be problem at all.

We’ll also do a thorough sleeper replacement before we do any spiking up, replacing any failed timber with concrete.

Now our process is in place, tomorrow should see at least 300m of rail installed, probably more as today saw lots of stuffing around to get ramps to the old 60lb and cutting closures to join the existing 80lb.

So far this method of re-railing is completely outstripping any previous method, as with just 4 people today, everything was achieved without silly amounts of effort or strain, which should be even easier tomorrow.

Meeting near Winters Flat Bridge from 8.15am or Maldon at 7.30am.