Track Inspection

We made a good start on our track inspections today, with both Maldon and Muckleford yards having been thoroughly walked, measured and written up.

We had a driver experience train operating today so we worked around that by not going out on the running line.

We spent a very long time going over Maldon Turntable, lubricating every moving part, test every possible position for alignment etc… it passed with flying colours, however we found a slight rumble in its operation as the wing wheel had to contend with a bit of detritus at the abutments, so a thorough shovelling off they got.

It’s now very well overdue a paint but hopefully all being well that won’t be too far away.

Between showers, we spent some time playing with a new tool we recently acquired, a metal bandsaw. We’ve been needing something to cut steel for a while now, generally using the rail saw, but that is not overly practical. A deal and opportunity too good to pass up came out way, so we’ve now got a decent bandsaw.

One of its many jobs will be trimming fishplates. It’ll no doubt be used for allsorts, however. We’re still getting the hang of it. It will comfortably cut a fishplate in under 2 mins – without the noise, sparks and back-breaking labour of the rail saw. That’s 6 fishplates down, only 394 to go!

Tomorrow’s crew is back onto track inspection duties, leaving Maldon 8am.