We had another good crack at inserting concrete sleepers today, with another 32 installed, we had a few other tasks to tend to as well today, so not quite as productive as on Thursday.

We’re actually very happy with how little effort is needed to get the track to a quite comfortable smoothness following the concrete sleepering, its much better than we expected.

We’ve now got a 60m ish stretch of full depths in the track, only many kilometres to go now!

We’ll be back into out here on Thursday and Friday, when we’ll hopefully get at least 150 in over the two days, quite possibly a few more however as we’re now learning quite a bit about what to do and how to go about it. Meeting at Maldon at 7.45am or on site (old tip crossing) from 8am

Today was a moderately successful day dropping out concrete sleepers, we managed around 600 sleepers, before the big digger wouldn’t perform. It’s developed a fuel starving issue, we suspect it’s likely a physical item in the tank as the issue seems to come and go and is particularly bad when the machine is on a certain angle! Anyway, that’s now Monday’s problem.

We’ve even put speed signs up for the section we work on yesterday, the 10mph is ridiculously conservative, as we tested the ride at speeds up to 25mph today, the concrete sleepers are rock solid and by all accounts ride much better than the timber sleepered track either side! However, we’ll give it a week to bed in and see how the minimial ballast trackwork holds up, and if all is well, then we’ll raise the limit to a more suitable speed.

As part of getting the sleeper train out of its location in Maldon, we had the need to move this carriage, 30bcpl, which is a currently under restoration. We must say we took the opportunity to admire the work being done and the transformation is quite something. Once it’s back in traffic, we would highly recommend going to inspect it!

Tuesday, all being well, will be a day of more concrete sleepers insertions, meeting Maldon 8am or down by the tip crossing from 8.15am.

Today we had a good crack at installing full depth concrete sleepers into the track, the chosen location was the old tip crossing near Maldon.

It was all undertaken by lifting the rail 150mm to match the increase in height of the concrete sleepers, that way, we’re not digging into the roadbed.

It didn’t take us long at all to get the hang of things, we’ve learnt a lot and no doubt will learn a lot more in time!

At the end of the rather leisurely and very much experimental day, we had installed 48 concrete sleepers, fixed suffiently good ramps at either end (to get to the concrete sleeper height) and given the section a bit of a jack and pack as requires to make it good enough for trains to use – it needs ballast to do much more with now.

Anyone with a keen eye will note that we’re very short on ballast now. Once we’ve completed any significant length of this, we’ll be chasing ballast very desperately, however at this stage the critical element is replacing the rapidly failing timber sleepers, to ensure we keep running trains into the future, we can keep the speed of trains down as required if the concrete sleepered track is a bit rough and lacking ballast, however we can’t safely run trains if the timber sleepers deteriorate much more.

Tomorrow will be in the same vein, however focusing on getting some of the massive stockpiles of sleepers at Maldon out to site. Meeting at Maldon from 8am, we’ll be jumping between Maldon Yard and Bendigo Road most of the day

We had a very successful day today, with a significant number of dips and minor geometry issues removed between Brown St and Boundary Track, we also finally completed tamping near Brown street while in the area. The last of ballast has been boxed up and the whole section is looking very smart. Over the next week or so, once it’s had a few trains over it settle the ballast, we’ll raise the speed limit in this section back up to 25mph, just as it used to be.

We’re hopeful on Thursday, of having a bit of a go at installing some full depth concrete sleepers near Maldon, it’ll be a trial day or two, learning what works and what doesn’t. We’ll meet at Maldon at 8am and work out the exact plan of attack then, however we’ll probably attack the area near the old tip crossing first.