Unfortunately the day started on a somewhat sour note, with the need to fix some damage. At some time yesterday, somebody decided they’d bounce their vehicle across the track at Muckleford Yard (for reasons unknown but likely with the intent to steal something). The only victim ended up being the signal wire, which didn’t take kindly to being caught up in a motor vehicle.
The wire broke quite some distance from the actual entanglement, and given the number of joins in this section of wire, we corrected it by replacing a section of the wire.
We did do it the cheats way, using u bolt cable joiners. Some of crew are very good at doing proper joins in the wire, however none of them were on hand today. These will do the job just as well and when we get a spare few years we can come through and have these done properly.
A keen eye will notice the fencing strainers being used on the wire, this isn’t to actually strain the wire, it’s just to aid in removing the slack and prevent accidental recoil while trying to tighten up the fiddly little u bolt nuts. Usually this job is done when only one set of hands is available, so we’ve learnt to make it as easy as possible.
Anyhow after the signal wire was back together and working correctly, we moved onto the real task. Replacing 3 failed sleepers in curve 18.
We also used the trip through to Maldon to get both of the diggers and attachments back home. It was quite convenient having one to change the sleepers and one to tamp them up.
While out and about with the tamper, we jacked and packed a few holes, it’s only a small job, but does make an enormous difference to the ride quality.
The afternoon was spent tidying up the remaining loose items around Curve 21. Although the curve has been complete for some time, we never quite found the time to complete the tidy up. Anyhow done now.
Tomorrow we’ve got a few more odd jobs to tend to. We’ll be meeting at Maldon from 8am, where depending on numbers we’ll plan our day’s workload.
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