Well, to cut a long story short, it’s all done!

But if you don’t cut that long story short, this is how it all played out…

Thursday morning began early, with an on-site start time of 7.30, and by 7.45, just about every bolt and screw that could be removed had been.

The second the road was shut, we were into destruction mode, and as usual we don’t take any hostages in this process, it’s much easy and quicker to just rip it apart, as it’s all reached the end of it’s life.

It all happened quite rapidly, however after the initial pull apart, the work drops back to mainly just digging for a few hours.

There was still enough going on to keep us busy however, with conduits needing assembling with draw ropes etc…

However the second we had that road-base down and rolled, we were into building track.

The getting everything in the right spots took a bit less time than we expected, so before long we had that whole section of track clipped up and connected!

We did one major thing differently at this point, where instead of putting in ballast then jacking up and tamping, we jacked up first to the final height and then put ballast between the rails only (so as not to bury the jacks). A light squeeze from the grabs then held it all at the right height, ready for the rest of the ballast and tamp.

So at the end of Thursday, that’s what we had achieved, which is quite a bit more than we usually achieve on day one, the practise has obviously paid off!

Today began with some final lining.

We found time to replace another couple of sleepers, closer to the yard before the ballast truck arrived.

We then spread the rock, did a very thorough tamp and whack, before handing it over to the Asphalters at 10am to do their bit.

Seemed a shame to bury it, as it came up looking very very smart.

While the Asphalters did their thing, we did a few odd jobs, such as reconnecting the signal wire and generally just tidying everything up. A little touch up tamping of the approaches, just little things of that nature.

It was certainly nice to have the time to tidying everything up in day 2 rather than needing to come back for a day 3 later on.

And the finished product! It was a lot of hard work, many hours, but it was an absolute pleasure to see the finished product this afternoon. Thankyou to everyone who has helped along the way.

After a massive day today, we’ve made amazing progress, with the track basically at level and line ready for tamping in the morning.

There will be heaps more photos and explanations to follow over the weekend, but for now, we’re miles ahead of schedule, despite starting over an hour late, issues outside our control unfortunately, we’ve used a few different techniques to achieve a much easier and quicker end product, which for the end of day 1 is pretty amazing.

A few pics of just a small snippet of works are below.

Thanks to everyone who was able to make it today to help us achieve such an amazing result, you have no idea how much we appreciate it!

Tomorrow’s crew, still has plenty of work to do, but thankfully the back is now certainly broken, will meet on site from 7.30am – access is via Chapmans Ln, parking by the goods shed is ideal, or if you come right around to the platform side, anywhere off the roadway will be fine too.

We had a very successful, but pictureless, day today.

Fuelling all the vehicles and loading the last of the items that’ll be needed for Thursday and Friday, before we headed our on site to remove the signal cable and pull through a draw wire under the road, tamp up a few little dips nearby and get all the sleepers stockpiled nearby ready for use.

We’ve prepared as much as we now can without actually pulling up track, so much so that after lunch we even moved onto other tasks, such as replacing 4 failed timber sleepers nearby and dragging the last of the long lengths of 94lb rail from Muckleford Yard across the crossing, meaning any damage caused will only be there another day (the damage to the asphalt was only a minor mark however!)

It’s shaping up to be a fairly straight forward task on Thursday, a small group of us will be meeting at Maldon at 7am on Thursday, with everyone else meeting on site at Muckleford from 7.30am, ready for a 7.40ish start. Parking will be in the fenced area of Muckleford Yard, well off the access road, as we’ll have quite a few trucks and diggers running up and down there as the day goes on.

We spent today preparing for the Walmer Road Level Crossing Rebuild, with most of the materials required transported to site.

We’ve even undertaken most of the preparations, including cutting rails where joints will be required and drilling holes to prepare the new island rails.

It’s all shaping up to be a nice straight forward job next week.

This afternoon we erected some semi permanent speed signs near Sawmill Rd (and updated one near Muckleford) to reflect the rise of track speed back to 25mph over the section we’ve just rerailed.

And while all that was happening, we had the flail mower hard at work tidying up the remaining long grass around Maldon.

It’s been a successful week! Next week will be all systems go to rebuild the crossing, Tuesday will be getting all the remaining materials and gear to site, meeting Maldon from 8am