We had a change of pace day today, renewing the derail blocks in Maldon Yard and lifting a Turnout which had settled a little in this big wet.

All three scotch blocks (2, 3 & 4 rds) were renewed with all steel derails, mainly to help reduce ongoing maintenance required, instead of being specially crafted blocks that are individually fitted in each case, these are an off the shelf item that requires nothing any more complex than screwing or spiking to the sleepers.

As part of the job, the supporting sleepers in 2 and 3 roads were renewed also.

The turnout at the UP end of Maldon Yard had settled a little at the toe, likely due to the ground getting wet for the first time in many decades. Unfortunately to tamp it up properly requires the removal of a good number of rods and bars, so it’s quite a time consuming task, however one that’s now completed.

While there, we set about ensuring all bolts were tight and every moving part was moving with ease and adequately lubricated, we were pleasantly surprised at how easily the pins came out of the rods, indicating the lubrication which is applied regularly is effective in both lubricating and preventing corrosion.

Check back tomorrow for details of Thursday’s works, as we’re slightly dependant of a number of pieces of equipment being available and working that currently need a little TLC, hopefully achievable tomorrow.

Although we had hoped to be back out doing more sleeper plates this week, tomorrow will be spent attending to a small list of jobs around Maldon Yard.

We’ll be meeting there from 8am.

Today was a fun filled day of spike driving! Using one of our new tools, another trolley mounted spiking hammer, this one’s electric start, which generally works well, there are a few little issues in the electrics that need tending to, but once we sort them out it’ll be a very useful asset. We’ve spiked up several hundred metres today as well as drilling the remained of the straight up to Curve 10.

Once the weather clears up and we aren’t littered with public holidays, we’ll be back into the swing of things and should get this knocked over in no time.

Tomorrow’s weather is looking very wet, so once again no workday. Next week will only see a gang Tuesday, as Thurs and Fri are public holidays. Tuesday gang will meet at Maldon at 7.45am or out near Gas Pipeline from 8.30am.

We’ve had a fairly busy few days lately. We have been fortunate enough to access a large collection of track maintenance equipment from a retiring rail contractor.

This is quite a big investment for the VGR, one we’ve managed to finance using some extremely generous loans, allowing us to secure the items now and pay it back over a few years, however, as always any donations to help pay back the loans sooner would be greatly appreciated and help take the burden off the VGRs cashflow. Contact Will if you’d like to know more.

The items arrived as a great convoy on Monday, with a great mountain of things on various trucks.

Among the items are a Telehander, HiRail Tipper, 2 trolleys (to tow behind the Excavators), and an enormous array of hand and power tools as well as a small container to help store it all in.

We’ve already used the telehandler extensively in setting up our tool storage area in the depot at Maldon, the tipper still needs a roadworthy to complete the transfer, however is currently (and recently) rail certified, meaning once we get a bit of paperwork out of the way we’ll be able to make great use of this item.

The tools came as an excellent package deal and although we may not have a use for every last spanner or crowbar, the slight inconvenience of storing them while we work out what we will actually use, id far exceeded by the incredible items we’ve now got available to help us in our tasks.

We’ll no doubt be showing them off here as time goes by!

Tomorrow’s weather is looking interesting, however it should be okay late morning, so we’ll still plan on working, the plan is to drive dog spikes (using our new fancy spike driver!), meeting Maldon 7.45am or out at Gas Pipeline area from 8.30am – if it’s raining heavily we’ve got plenty of sorting in the containers at Maldon to do still.