We were back out at the recent re-railing site today, installing sleeper plates and dogging up. Just under 3 pallets of sleeper plates were required.
Any failed sleepers have been identified, these will be changed once all the good timber is dogged up.
One of the 60/80lb junction plates we installed last week was starting to show signs of cracking, it would probably have survived another 30 years, but to be safe, we’ve exchanged it for a non-cracked model.
We even got to test our new tool, a Milwaukee 1inch drive rattle gun. It is an absolute ripper and would appear to have more power than the petrol guns, less than half the weight and much quieter. This is a very kind donation from one of the gang, and we’re extremely grateful as it’ll certainly save us a lot of back breaking work.
The rattle gun was also used to break up a few lengths of 60lb rail, partly to test and partly to improve access by the old occupation crossing.
Lots of drilling and spiking followed, with around half of one leg complete.
As part of the process, every sleeper was tamped, unfortunately this did result in a slight loss of lateral stability, especially in the section that was yet to spiked up. As such we did a quick run through lining the track then dragged up more rock to form a thicker shoulder.
We managed to get it a lot straighter than it was previously. Once we can complete the spiking on Thursday, this will become nice and stable once again, until then we’ve placed a 10mph speed limit over the length.
We’ll be out here again on Thursday, meeting Maldon 7.45am or on site from 8.15am.
VGR Civil Blog 