Friday began with a big tidy up of all the timber sleepers, bundling and strapping before transferring them back up to Maldon Yard.
Of all the sleepers removed last week, only 2 of them were good enough to recover for reuse.
The afternoon was then spent preparing and dropping out the last of the concrete sleepers to close the little gap we’ve got between the runs of Concrete Sleepers.
We got a bit more wise to the preparation this time, laying out a good number on the rail to give us a very even surface to work from, this also helped us identify any unusable sleepers, of which there is a few, and recover any good parts to fix up others.
We’ve been trialling a range of lubricants to aid the clip pulling process, the best has proven to be a small drop of soluble oil in a good quantity of water. Makes a world of difference and doesn’t leave a stick residue. Also relatively cheap and easy to prepare.
Next week should see all these sleepers in and installed, removing another 190 odd timber sleepers from the section. The total for the recent renewals around Bendigo Road was 356, not bad going at all given the added work getting the levels to match around the crossing.
Monday’s gang will meet at Maldon at 8am or out on site (approx 200m on the UP side of Bendigo Road Crossing).
VGR Civil Blog 