Bridge Beams

Based on the success of our trials with steel crossheads, we’re now taking the leap and finally trialling steel beams.

It’ll all be far more clear once we can show the pictures of us installing them, however in essence, we’ll be trying to keep the look of our timber bridges by only replacing the inner beams in steel and leaving the outers as timber.

This method allows us to install bracing, and as we need to replace 2 rather than just 1, we can cascade the (generally) good excess timber beam to a different location.

Our new band saw has proved invaluable in this task, cutting the various components, giving marvellous angle cuts.

And the portable bandsaw was great for the rough trimming of bits to make things much more manageable.

The magnetic drill with broach made drilling holes a breeze and allowed us to get from a pile of steel to a pair of beams ready to be installed in only 2 days!

The beams were delivered cut to length, saving us a lot of work.

The basic drawing follows the same style in use all over the VR system, modified only to suit current standard material sizes and available materials.

Most of today’s work was preparing the bracing, which we never got a completed pic of, however it’ll look pretty tidy once it’s all done. It’s a big mechano set, having now been disassembled for transport and insertion.

The plan is to get things out to the site on Friday and Monday and really get stuck in on Tuesday and Wednesday, the site being Muckleford Creek Bridge. We’ll still be meeting each day at Maldon 8am as we’ll need lots of tools etc.. 

In other news, Monday saw us replace the last fishplates between Donkey Farm Trk and the Bridge, meaning we’ve now replaced all the 6 hole plates between Maldon and Muckleford.

We’ve even stacked up our excess 6 hole fishplates into some long-term storage stacks. It’s amazing how little space they take up when stacked we’ll. The rail racks, in this case, weren’t intended for this purpose but will do the job well.

It’s been another busy week, with another big week to come next week!