Still a long way to go to rebuild the crossing, however we’re a way closer now, with both sides of the crossing now heavier rail, with just the very crossing itself to go.
We’d strategically left enough 60lb to permit the installation of some welded junction rails back when we rerailed last year. The down side and crossing will be 94lb, while the up side is 80lb. Why? Because it is, it’s a sheer fluke that the change in weights ended up so close to the crossing. However, it’s fortuitous should this crossing ever get flashing lights.
We did as much pre work as we could prior to the digger arriving on site, which included fastening up a few timber sleepers that’ll remain for now, on the Down side of the crossing.
Once the digger was there however, it was all systems go dragging rail across the roadway and lining everything up to get the welded junctions square.
After some double and triple checking, we marked up and begun cutting. It’s all too late now if we’re wrong!
For some reason, despite us collecting everything in pairs, there were no matching pairs of junction rails in the stockpiles! So one had to be cut to suit – this is probably not a surprise as most of the junctions on the Guildford track were in locations that also altered the joint stagger, so side for side they probably were a little different.
We had to add in a short section of 80lb on the end of the welded junction rails to enable a transition back to the 60lb to allow trains to run until next Thursday, however it’s much better to do a little extra work in the lead up rather than try to squeeze it all into the rebuild.
Once we were happy with the critical end, the up end of the rails were cut to length as required to join up with the 80lb that was installed last year.
The little digger had been beavering away installing concrete sleepers, in place of failed timber ones, on the Down side of the crossing, while all the other excitement was occurring.
Once they were clipped up, the UP side received the same treatment. A total of 22 sleepers were replaced today, leaving about 42 to be replaced next week during the rebuild.
A bit of a tidy up was had following clipping up. This section is quickly becoming a case of spot the timber sleeper and hopefully, all going well, it’ll only be a few more years and it’ll be a sea of concrete.
We’ve started bringing sleepers down to the crossing in readiness for next week. There is a bit more preparation we can do, however, not a great amount until the road is closed.
It’s a little hard to tell, however the section up from the crossing has been lined, tided and just awaits jacking and tamping tomorrow.
We need to set our levels either side of the crossing tomorrow, so we’ll be spending most of the day jacking and packing as required to achieve that. All going well, we’ve got a small job in Castlemaine to knock over also, however we’ll sacrifice that if need be. Meeting at Sawmill Road Crossing from 8.45am.
VGR Civil Blog 