On a day that felt like it was going to be a washout, we achieved managed to achieve an enormous amount.

We began with the goal of installing 3 lengths of rail into the low leg of the curve, as the weather was looking very unfavourable.

However after a few extended breaks sheltering in the vehicles, we ended up installing 10 lengths, a distance of 374m, taking up almost up to the start of Curve 9.

It’s a little hard to tell from this pic, but the end point was another rail length past where the digger is.

And it wouldn’t be a day in the rain without a little bit of bogging.

Unfortunately simple and convenient to extract, taking all the fun out of it, we didn’t even have to get the digger off the track.

Tomorrow’s gang will meet on site from 8.15am (mind you don’t park in any soft ground), the weather is looking a bit interesting, so it may end up being more preparation for the next rerailing than actual rerailing, allowing us to hid in vehicles to escape the rain if required.

A further 80m of rail installed today, completing the high leg of curve 10.

The afternoon was spent removing the screws from the low leg, dropping out all the jewellery required and preparing the joints. We’ve also removed all the anchors from the next curve. Hopefully all that saves us a lot of time on Thursday and we can make some significant headway in knocking over Curve 10 and starting Curve 9.

We’ve also set a new yearly record for rerailing, 4289m so far this year. Our other high ranking year was 2018, where we rerailed 4160m. The long rails and concrete sleepers have certainly sped up the rerailing process, with less than half the physical work required.

Thursday’s gang will be meeting on site from 8.15am or at Maldon at 7.45am.

We didn’t necessarily set out to do an enormous amount of rerailing today, however, we’re now only two rails short of finishing the high leg of Curve 10.

We started the day by removing the last of the screws, which took a while, before deciding that we had a large enough gang, 6 of us today, to tackle a good bit of rerailing.

This was much quicker going the previous little bit, as there wasn’t the excess of ballast here.

We ended up putting in 6 lengths of rail today, a length of 247m, which was about 3 lengths more than we initially planned, however it was comfortably completed by 2, as we had a few who had to be on the road by then.

This week has been quite successful, with 577m of rerailing completed, which is also the current monthly total. Hopefully we can beat last month’s total which was 2949m!

Next week, on Tuesday, we’ll be meeting at Maldon at 8am or Curve 10 from 8.30am. Hopefully with enough hands, we can make a excellent start on getting curve 10 completed.

We’ve now completed tangent 10-11, with the remaining 5 lengths installed today.

Only a small crew of 4 today, so an excellent effort.

We’ve now got the bolting up down to a fine art, using the digger to perfectly align the rails and ensure everything goes together by hand.

Only one joint required triming to work in with the concrete sleepers, so that saved some time. We had the 5 lengths in and clipped up just on lunch time, a total of 205m of rerailing.

We had to juggle a bit of rail to get a neat closure unfortunately, which is only about the 2nd time in the past two months we’ve had to do so, just luck more than anything regarding where the joints fall, as although they’re nominally unit lengths, in reality it’s not quite the case.

The afternoon was spent removing screws and anchors from the high leg of Curve 10, we’re well over half way through that, so if we get a few people tomorrow and the weather holds out, we might even get a decent bit of rerailing completed.

Tomorrow we’ll meet on site from 8.15am, it’s now easiest to come in from Sawmill Road and under the bridge.