Tomorrow, although not looking as wet, is still looking wet and given the job we need to do requires lineside access, we’ll cancel the workday, to prevent any unnecessary bogging.

We should be back to finer weather next week, with a more normal workload planned. Tuesday we’ll be meeting at Maldon at 8am, probably doing odd jobs around Maldon all day.

Firstly, apologies for the late Tuesday blog and secondly, given the weather tomorrow is looking very very wet, there will be no workday. Friday may end being cancelled too, check back here tomorrow night.

Anyhow, Tuesday was successful, with just under 1km worth of sleepers drilled and spikes started.

A procession of drillers followed by spikers kept making their way along the track.

Works had to be halted momentarily as a Driver Experience train passed through the worksite, quite rare for a train to be running on a trackwork day, so a nice change for the gang.

The crew just kept on moving up the hill, with the progress very impressive.

Another short break in the works as the train returned through in the afternoon.

We’d all had enough of that by mid afternoon, so rounded out the afternoon by stacking a couple of pallets of sleeper plates.

Check back here on Friday for details of works next week.

Yesterday’s small gang spent the day dropping out spikes along all the plates that were inserted on Thursday, ready for drilling and spike standing on Tuesday.

Following that, sleeper plates were dropped out all the way to Sawmill Road on one leg, ready for insertion late next week. This process is happening much quicker than first expected, it’s certainly not an exciting part of the job, but setting up and getting into a system that keeps moving along is quite efficient.

We’re focussing on just one leg at a time, as with the other leg unplated, we can still see where the old holes are, making drilling new holes much easier. So far it seems to be working well.

It’s also now obvious just how far we have rerailed, as everything is now involving a lot of walking!

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

Today was a massive day of shoving in sleeper plates.

About 1.5kms worth of plates were inserted under the track, starting at tangent 11-12 and finishing up at curve 10, so far only in one leg. The big digger would lift, while the plates were slid under, the little digger followed along behind doing a tamping pass to firm everything up and prepare for driling.

It wasn’t without its slight challenges, with a broken off grab jaw slowing down proceedings for a few moments early in the day, but all spares were on hand to get us back in action.

The act of tamping behind the plate insertion not only helps prepare for drilling, by lifting any dropped sleepers, it also ensures the concrete sleepers are properly supported with ballast.

It doesn’t look greatly different following this step, however it has actually removed a few dips in the track.

Given that there was 10 of us on hand today, a small gang set about drilling holes and starting dog spikes, with quite a few hundred metres now ready to have spikes driven.

Tomorrow’s crew will be starting around the gas pipeline from 8.15am, dropping out dog spikes as required ready for Tuesday’s gang. And hopefully dropping out more plates, as we’ve inserted everything that was dropped out.