Another extremely successful day today, with the UP leg now rerailed right up to Sawmill Rd Bridge.

What began as just a few lengths, quickly snowballed into 216m of rail, and by sheer fluke, the rail happened to end in exactly the right place just before the bridge, it’s nice to have a win sometimes.

Before we rerail across the bridge we’ll get the other leg down to the same point, which is where the gang is standing.

It’s really feeling like we’re getting somewhere now, with mere meters to go now and we’ll have all the 94lb rail in. Everything the other side is 80lb and they’ll likely be next year’s job given how much we still need to go back to do before summer.

Tuesday’s gang will be meeting at Maldon at 8am or out on site from 8.30am.

An extremely successful day today, with 503m of rail installed. We didn’t actually count the number of rails but it certainly felt like a lot.

It all happened with a minimum of fuss and with clockwork precision, with the whole low leg of Curve 9 completed before lunch.

So after lunch we set about making a start on the tangent. We’re about a rail length of the whistle board now, putting Sawmill Rd Crossing firmly in our sights. The level crossing will be the end point for the short term, as we then go back and begin the massive task of drilling, spiking and replacing any failed timber.

It now seems quite achievable, with only a few hundred metres to go.

Tomorrow’s gang will meet on site from 8.15am.

We’re now officially half way through Curve 9, with the high leg completed today, 5 lengths of rail, totalling 214m.

We actually finished that quite early in the day, so we’ve removed all the screws from the low leg and prepared the rails to go in.

Hopefully on Thursday, weather permitting, we’ll get most of the low leg completed. Meeting at Maldon 7.45am or on site from 8.15am on Thursday.

Despite the rain, we managed to install another 163m of rail today, into the high leg of Curve 9.

The difference in this section, with nothing more than the new rail is quite noticeable.

We’ve also distributed the jewellery right through the curve to speed things up next week.

Today’s effort takes us to just under half way around the high leg of the curve, meaning we should be able to get the whole curve completed next week.

This week’s rerailing total came to 617m, with the monthly total so far sitting at 1192m.

Tuesday’s gang will meet at Maldon at 8am or out on site from 8.30am.