Maldon Yard

A further little tidying up of the gravel after a drop of rain over night, saw that bit tidied up first off this morning.

It was then onto fitting in closures using replacement rail, as the removed stuff was too far gone to consider reusing.

A big clean up of all our stuff was also had, to make the area both usable and presentable for the weekend.

We’ve managed to cascade the metal biscuits we used while resleepering the Muckleford Castlemaine Section a few years ago, to fasten the 60lb rail to the concretes.

It was then lined and jacked to level, ready for the ballasting.

Once ballasting was completed a good solid tamp firmed it up nicely.

We then applied gravel to the edges to make it usable to water the steam loco, where people will need to walk.

Over in the 1/2 road turnout, a new timber was required at the toe of the points, so this was installed and brought back to gauge before fastened up.

This turnout has reached the end of its useful life, it’s served well, at 140 years old, but it is now getting beyond realistic repair. We’ve got plan to do this a full renewal later this year so we’re just doing the minimum up until then to keep it usable.

It was then given a good tidy up, check, lubricate etc… to finish off the job.

The same process was repeated on the other turnouts to keep everything in good working order.

Today’s efforts have come up looking very nice, there will be more gravel to add next week, however we’ll worry about that next week, it’ll be adequate for this weekend.

Tomorrow will be a bit of a quiet day, the workday won’t start until 10am at Maldon and will probably finish fairly early. It’ll be about getting things prepared and ready for the job next week – which involves removing the old trolley road turnout (as this is very much life expired!). If you were on the fence about coming up, tomorrow’s probably an excellent day to stay home and keep warm.