Sleeper Train

Today was a moderately successful day dropping out concrete sleepers, we managed around 600 sleepers, before the big digger wouldn’t perform. It’s developed a fuel starving issue, we suspect it’s likely a physical item in the tank as the issue seems to come and go and is particularly bad when the machine is on a certain angle! Anyway, that’s now Monday’s problem.

We’ve even put speed signs up for the section we work on yesterday, the 10mph is ridiculously conservative, as we tested the ride at speeds up to 25mph today, the concrete sleepers are rock solid and by all accounts ride much better than the timber sleepered track either side! However, we’ll give it a week to bed in and see how the minimial ballast trackwork holds up, and if all is well, then we’ll raise the limit to a more suitable speed.

As part of getting the sleeper train out of its location in Maldon, we had the need to move this carriage, 30bcpl, which is a currently under restoration. We must say we took the opportunity to admire the work being done and the transformation is quite something. Once it’s back in traffic, we would highly recommend going to inspect it!

Tuesday, all being well, will be a day of more concrete sleepers insertions, meeting Maldon 8am or down by the tip crossing from 8.15am.