Re-railing

Quite a change of pace today, with some of the very last of the 60lb being swapped over for 80lb.

We managed to resurrect the ballast brush, to help flick rocks clear and that made the job much easier, given the thick layer of ballast here, it was going to be a lot of digging otherwise.

This section is part of the track circuiting for Midland Hwy Crossing, as such the crossing has by necessity been made inactive to allow these works, hence why its desirable to do such works in an extended no trains period, here we’re removing the diode at the far end of the  circuit to ensure no damage could come to it.

We flicked up the replacement rails and had a bit of a think about the best locations for joints (as no two of these rails were the same length, so a few needed cutting, best to minimise that however).

It took no time at all and the down rail was in.

And with the new down leg insulated joint for the level crossing, these haven’t moved at all, but given the rail size increase, new insulated joints were required. These are hard-butted with a plastic endpost between the rails to ensure electrical isolation, and the aim being that these are frozen (don’t expand / contract) as any gap here tends to result in the plastic endpost breaking, they’re really easy to install when re-railing like this, much quicker and simpler than in pre-existing track.

Once we’d dropped in the new rail on the Down leg prior, without actually extending onto the bridge, we set about the UP leg.

This one required a couple of cuts to make it all happy, so took a little longer.

Anyhow before long it too was in place in 80lb.

During the day we had Rolf working with his theodolite to give us a straight line to work to over the bridge, as the rails that are there currently are far from straight, we certainly don’t want to include those errors in the rerail.

Everything from today has been bolted up, but nothing has yet been clipped up, meaning we’ll be able to hit the ground running in the morning.

Tomorrow’s crew will start at Maldon to collect the yellow truck then meeting on site, entry is best from Midland Hwy Crossing from around 8.30am.