The glorious 51mm’s of rain hasn’t overly dampened our spirits and given how dry it was in the lead up, there is barely any mud around, the earth seems to have acted like a giant sponge.

We’ve aimed for a relatively conservative number this week, however given the progress of today we’ll likely achieve right through to the end of Curve 18.

We’ve managed to get approximately 30 sleepers under today and clipped up, which gives us a good chance of getting all the intermediates in and clipped up tomorrow.

Meeting at Maldon 8am or on site from 8.15am

A final squeeze to remove a few dips from this week’s section and installing a decent ramp for the Easter services has resulted in a very nice looking length of track.

Today’s gang also managed a walk through tidy up of the resleepered section as well as blowing the rocks from the sleepers and rail from this cutting right through to Pipeline Crossing and marking up all the sleeper spacings. All in preparation for after Easter.

The total so far is 1309 sleepers installed since the beginning of March, placing us well over halfway to Pipeline Crossing.

We were the unfortunately victim of some well scouted out theft again last night, mainly sleeper plates. Anyhow, some quick thinking by the Local Police in the early hours of this morning saw a suspicious vehicle intercepted, the vehicle seized, and subsequently, the plates returned to us! A very big thankyou goes out to the various local police stations for their actions. We greatly appreciate it. Please, if you see or hear anything suspicious, let the police know.

We’ll be back in earnest after Easter on the Tuesday, beginning at Maldon from 8am then out on site from 8.30am.

We finished the clipping up today before having a massive clean up of all the timber sleepers and general mess beside the track. We’re yet to squeeze up the ramp and dips in this recent section so that’ll be job one tomorrow, then we’ll spend the day preparing the next section, through to pipeline, ready for the big push after Easter to get through to Pipeline Crossing.

Tomorrow’s crew meeting at Maldon at 8am or on site from 8.15am.

More of the same today, with everything up to the cutting now inserted and most clipped up.

We’ve taken the opportunity to line the curve somewhat, which has made a significant visual difference.

Tomorrow’s crew will meet out on site from 8.15am, where we will hopefully knock over the clipping up and begin the clean up.