Another action filled day of dropping out and stacking sleeper plates! We certainly feel we’re getting close to earning our proficiency badges now.

A small team also managed to get all the standing spikes driven, meaning we’ve now got only one side to go! Sounds easy if you say it fast.

The afternoon was spent doing the glorious task of stacking sleeper plates onto pallets! We managed 4 pallets worth before all of us decided we’d achieved quite a sufficient amount! That’s around 960 plates, which sounds a lot, until you’re out on the ground and realise just how much distance we’ve covered with the rerailing, no doubt we’ll still need to load up at least another 3 pallets before the job is done.

Thursday and Friday are looking wet, particularly Thursday. Check back here Tomorrow night for details of Thursday, however it’s looking like it’ll be wet.

Today was a whole day dedicated to drilling holes and standing dog spikes. We’ve now drilled a hole in one side of everytimber sleeper between Muckleford and Sawmill Rd, with just the whole other side to go now!

Tuesday’s gang, which will meet at Maldon 8am or out near Curve 10 from 8.30am, will drive the spikes stood today and begin dropping out plates for the other leg.

A successful day of inserting sleeper plates, with one leg now all under and tamped.

We even found plenty of time to start drilling and standing spikes, with several hundred metres of that completed.

And we had enough people on hand to drive a couple of hundred metres of spikes also.

Today saw one of our new toys tested. A trolley for the Excavators. We’re still working through developing the operating procedure and although we think we’ve covered all bases, a field test is always required to make sure everything behaves as expected, it certainly seems to and has already improved productivity greatly! No doubt this and it’s slightly bigger cousin will feature regularly on here!

Tomorrow’s crew will continue with the drilling and spiking, starting from Curve 9 (the curve on the Down side of Sawmill Rd Crossing) from 8.30am.

As hoped, we will be out inserting sleeper plates from Curve 10 towards Sawmill Road tomorrow.

Meeting at Maldon from 8am or on site from 8.30am (site is best accessed from Sawmill Rd end).