Today was extremely successful, and we’ve reached the summit – it’s nowhere near complete, but we’re their.

Friday was unfortunately quite unsuccessful, with both diggers disgracing themselves, both relatively minor in the scheme of things, the little one required a new hose, which took about 1.5hrs to replace. The big one failed on a trip up to Maldon, which proved very time consuming to get home, but all done, issue found and hopefully later this week the part will have turned up and it’ll be back in business. We still managed to finish what we needed to and completed a further 32 sleepers, taking the weekly total to 328 Sleepers – not bad at all for week one.

We’re crossing the fingers for a bit more luck this week, so far we’ve aimed to install 260 sleepers – we’re expecting much slower progress in the cuttings – we have extremely close cuttings on our line, giving very little wiggle room to do sleeper changes, however so far we’re doing OK, just a bit slower than last week.

We’ve got 65 sleepers under the track at the 1 in 4 spacings, all have the biscuits set and the majority are clipped up, finishing that will be job one tomorrow.

We’re quietly hopefully of getting all the sleepers under tomorrow and Thursday, hopefully leaving us the chance to knock over another 40 or so later in the week, but given the short week, we don’t want to get too ambitious, a small breakdown certainly loses a lot of time.

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

Another successful one today, with around 150 additional sleepers inserted and clipped up. Not too many words today as it’s a carbon copy of the last few days , however lots of pics

We had all the toys in action today and had a great result.

It’s very surprising how easily and quickly this process takes the track from looking very rough and ready to looking extremely solid and sturdy.

We’re getting good at de-dogging with the Excavators, a real back and time saver.

The total count for sleepers so far this week is 296, hopefully we’ll get a few more in tomorrow, as well as finishing off the ramps and preparing the next section for next week.

Tomorrow’s crew meeting on site from 8am.

Another extremely successful day, with another 30 odd sleepers inserted and clipping up, about another 30 inserted and yet to clipped up leaving about another 60 to insert tomorrow, it’s quite likely we’ll beat our weekly aim of 250 sleepers this week, possibly not by a great deal, as we will have a bit to do to fix up the ramps and geometry issues (however these are amazingly minimal, which is quite surprising).

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

Unfortunately the next few months will seem very repetitive, however while it’s still fresh and exciting we’ll describe the process in painstaking detail!

Yesterday’s very small crew got the track lifted 6 inches and inserted every fourth sleeper.

Today’s crew clipped all those up, removed all the remaining timber sleepers, using mainly just the digger to push them down (there is now plenty of room below them) and collect all that jewellery up before it got buried.

Then it was onto installing other 1 in 4 (meaning every second sleeper was installed), this is to prevent burying any unfastened sleepers – which immediately slows work to no end.

Followed up by the final pass where everything missing is inserted. No doubt we’ll adjust and refine this process in due course, however for now, this is easily the quickest we’ve ever installed 118 concrete sleepers! Just over 1.5 day’s work.

We’ve found a few tricks to improve things, such as sitting the sleepers up ahead of time for pad installation, otherwise it’s all gone pretty much exactly to plan!

We’ve decided to not worry too much about track alignment during the 1 in 4 install (it can move extremely easily), as it is extremely easy to re-align while only clipped up every fourth, by the time its 1 in 2, it’s a real struggle to move, once they’re all there… it’s only going to be a production tamper aligning it then.

So far, we’ve done nothing but line the track, the top has turned out as it is just by the act of lifting it, which is staggeringly good conpared to beforehand, we really should have taken a before pic. All the major dips have been very significantly improved, almost like smoothing a rough surface.

We’re very happy with how things are progressing and it’ll get about 200 times easier once the weather cools a bit more!

We’ll be out again tomorrow, meeting on site from 8.15am.