Concrete Sleepers

We had another successful day today, with an additional 54 concrete sleepers installed, all of the last two day’s work has been jacked to smooth any significant dips and given a good squeeze.

It’s relatively slow going, but it’s certainly now settled into a steady pace, and we’re getting into a good rhythm, it seems quite achievable to do all the way to Muckleford.

We’re using a combination of e clip type sleepers and fastclip type sleepers. We’re very well practised with E clips, so that’s no hassle, we’re using them as every fourth sleeper so as to ensure consistent gauge and anchoring. With fastclips being used in between.

The fastclip sleepers have come to us setup to use with 53/60kg rail. Obviously we’re using 80lb (or 40kg) rail here so they’re not quite ready for use. Purchasing the correct items to convert over comes in at around $25 a sleeper and we’re just not quite flush with enough cash to do that! So in our usual ingenious manner, we’ve come up with a suitable solution that we can upgrade when we get the suitable funds, but will be significantly better than continuing on with aging timber!

The solution is simple, by modifying a standard e clip type biscuit, cutting off the little tab bits, they can be placed in the gap between the 53kg biscuits and the rail, filling the gap perfectly (this isn’t an accident, they’re essentially identical to e clip sleepers, just with different clips, so the spacings are identical). They also have the added advantage of being slightly thicker, so they ensure that on the 80lb, the fastclips are very snug on the foot of the rail, they’re behaviour is very much comparable to an E clip in this regard and we’re very confident of their success, however they’re a bit different to install…

They come in from the sides, hand tools are available, but it’s hard work, powered options are available, but expensive and in all honesty for the numbers we can realistically do in a day, probably an overkill, especially as we have an excavator with a grabbing feature, right on the spot putting the sleepers in. It does take a fair bit of practice to get it right, but we’re certainly getting there now, the short bits of angle just keep everything nice and square and stop the grab jaws trying to lift the clips, we also found given these are a little rusty, a few drops of oil makes a world of difference.

A surprisingly small amount of jacking is all that is required to get the rails back to a sufficiently good top for traffic (in all honesty, it’s better now than it was when it was timber! That probably will worsen a little over time as there is insufficient ballast to really tamp things up and make them solid, however using the grabs to squeeze the gravel ballast in place of the tamper does seem to be working well, also greatly quicker and much quieter. Well be keeping a speed restriction on until we can obtain sufficient ballast and a production tamp, but it’s already noticeably firmer and more rigid than it was as timber.

We’ll continue with this on Tuesday, meeting Maldon 8am or out on site from 8.15am