Another very successful day of rerailing, with a further 5 lengths installed.

To avoid the issue of joints falling directly over concrete sleepers, a few rails needed cropping and drilling.

The slowest part of the job is almost always unfastening the old rail, an unfortunately fiddly task that often requires cutting of a screw or spike near a joint.

The ability of the concrete sleepers to maintain gauge adequately to operate the digger over safely before the clipping up gang has been through, saves a lot of time, but does give a weird illusion when the old rail is partly out and the new still to be lifted in.

The clipping up, not the most glorious or exciting job, but a rather easy and rewarding one compared with drilling and spiking.

The gang even discovered a little leverage boosting trick to move a stubborn rail over those few extra mm’s that is sometimes needed to get the biscuit in. The trick is to place a biscuit between the Web and the pansetter tool, it prevents the sleeper being lifted, but usually if that’s an issue getting biscuits in isn’t.

After this week’s big effort, only one 94lb rail is needed to complete the tangent. This should comfortably be achieved on Tuesday. Meeting Maldon 8am or on site from 8.30am.

In a slight change of plans, Will’s currently out of action with a touch of the Covid, but the gang managed very successfully without him, achieving the installation of 6 x 55m 94lb rails or 330m. (One of the rails may have only been a 42m rail, but either way it’s still a good effort)

Although things were a little slower, the gang is now well practised in the art of re-railing, so the progress was still impressive.

In this section the concrete sleeper count is well over 1 in 3, so regardless of the timber sleepers not being fastened up straight away, the gauge holding is excellent.

The last 2 rails still need clipping up tomorrow and the gang size tomorrow will determine how many more lengths will be installed.

The 6 rails mark half way along the straight. Its unlikely that’ll be completed tomorrow, but it’s very likely that’ll be completed on Tuesday next week.

Tomorrow’s gang will meet at Maldon from 7.45am or on site from 8.15am.

As predicted, a good sized gang was on hand today and we comfortably installed the last 5 lengths of 94lb rail in the UP leg of the straight. Another 275m of rail.

Between us we all managed to forget to take photos of the actual work, but plenty of the finished product.

Today’s progress is a good indication that we should be able to install all 12 lengths required to complete the Down leg on Thursday and Friday this week. On Thursday we’ll meet at Maldon at 7.45am or on site – Farmers Bridge – from 8.15am, there’s little to no need to meet at Maldon unless you’d like a lift to site.

Today saw excellent progress made with 385m of 94lb rail installed.

The day started off extremely picturesquely, only just above freezing temperature but still very pleasant.

Before long we’d flicked out the 60lb that had been unfastened yesterday and dropped in the 94lb.

Given it was looking like we were in for a very early finish, we decided we could successful achieve another 3 x 55m lengths of 94lb (making a total of 7 lengths over the two days), which given our relatively small crews on both days is an excellent effort.

There’s only 5 more lengths of 94lb to install in the UP leg and we’ll be at the curve, then we’ll jump over to the Down leg and head for the curve again.

If numbers are good on Tuesday, there’s no reason we won’t complete the 5 lengths in the UP leg. Meeting Maldon 8am or out on site from 8.30am.