It was actually 5 sleepers that still needed changing and 3 fishplates, all of which we managed in good time today. The final count of Yesterday’s sleepers was an even 80.

As part of a transfer train that was running today, we’ve unloaded 176 concrete sleepers lineside near Sawmill Rd, in readiness for re-railing the next section. It’s not often we’re 6 months ahead in these things… it feels very organised!

It was a very attractive looking works train, complete with Z van!

The afternoon was spent doing exciting jobs, like collecting the last of the jewellery and breaking up the 60lb rails that were dangling from Farmers and Walmer Road Bridges. We also spent some time stockpiling old timber sleepers and tidying up lineside in readiness for a flail mow over the coming weeks.

We’ve really only got a tamping pass and a ballast drop to go and we’ll have this section more or less complete, which will probably occur in around a fortnight.

At this stage, the exact task that we’ll be up to on Tuesday is a little uncertain, so check back on Monday evening for details. Likely we’ll all be meeting at Maldon from 8am.

An extremely successful day of inserting and clipping up concrete sleepers. We’re yet to do the actual count, but it’s around the 80 sleepers mark, with everything from Curve 10 to Sawmill Rd now complete.

It’s a very well practised artform now, the clipping up of the concrete.

And the little blue mark is just to indicate which sleepers have been replaced for tamping purposes.

Today’s sizable gang was able to out perform the rate at which the digger could insert. Spending most of the day close behind the action.

We did so well infact, we had to send the big digger off to collect more sleepers, as we just ran out of time on Tuesday to get the final 30 or so out.

In that whole length, we only had 6 joints which when we plated them up, prevented the failed sleepers from being replaced using concrete, so 3 of these were remedied with shorter or bar fishplates.

And despite severe weather predictions, it was only just starting to rain at knock off time.

Tomorrow’s gang has a grand total of 4 sleepers and 3 sets of fishplates to change before we can deem this part of the job over! However there’s still some jewellery to collect, lots of tamping to do and quite a bit of mess to tidy up, so we’ll be busy!

Meeting near the diggers by Sawmill Rd Bridge from 8.30am, apologies in advance if the day starts a little late, however a truck of point timbers needs unloading at Maldon prior to heading out on site, however this shouldn’t take too long.

Well… it was an extremely successful day, in all regards, except that we forgot to take a single picture!

Today’s task was to install and clip up concrete sleepers.

Before the driver experience train Monday, both diggers put in a few hours, running sleepers out and inserting 27 under the track.

Today’s crew clipped up those 27, plus an additional 71 sleepers, with a further 7 still needing clipping up on Thursday.

This means we’ve replaced almost all failed sleepers between Muckleford and Curve 10 (the curve at the top of the grade), leaving about another 100 or so to still replace to get to Sawmill Rd, which if all goes well, may be achieved on Thursday and Friday. There was obviously a slight doubling up in the failed sleepers count, as the final number will be just over 200, rather than the anticipated 400, which is nice, it also means our limited supply of low profile concrete sleepers can be stretched a little further.

Thursday’s gang will meet at Maldon at 7.45am or out near Curve 10 from 8.15am.

We set off this morning with 2 spiking hammers and well before morning tea the final spike had been driven.

Once that was done and we’d celebrated with a cuppa, it was onto the next task, replacing the failed sleepers. We’ve replaced 41 sleepers so far, with concretes and dropped out another 60 concrete’s ready for Tuesday, where hopefully we’ll get close to 120 failed sleepers replaced.

In slightly different news, we’ve been lucky enough to have been allocated some surplus signalling equipment from Seymour. This was collected and brought over to the railway this week, where its now stored pending use. This equipment will go towards several signalling projects we have coming up, the details of which will no doubt be covered in great detail here as work progresses.

Tuesday’s gang will meet at Maldon from 8am or out near Farmers Bridge from 8.30am.