Today’s effort was again a great success, albeit somewhat chilly at the start with a light frost, reminding us its still winter.

As we hadn’t undertaken any preparation this side of the bridge, a lot of today was spent getting the old rail free. This is the worst part of the job unfortunately, but it’s just got to be done.

In no time though we’d reached the end of the curve, the rails has been swapped and clipping up was full steam ahead.

We’d initially planned to get to the end of the curve, to match where the 80lb ran out on the high leg, but we decided that given we’d achieved that well before lunch, we could probably manage another few lengths.

To give us a joint stagger between legs (these rails aren’t all exactly the same length, so trying to get them square would be a power of work, with no real gain) a 14m rail was installed, but that resulted in the next rail having a joint exactly in the pedestrian crossing! So, two 14m rails were installed, giving us the equivalent of the same desired stagger, without the nuisance of a joint in the crossing.

Here we’re bolting up the first length on the down leg past the curve, we’d re-railed the down leg of the curve some years back in 80lb to strengthen it, so it was nice to be able to bolt straight to it.

As we were feeling ambitious, we extended our re-railing to take us through the pedestrian crossing, which inevitably meant digging it out.

Thankfully a very quiet crossing, so we didn’t inconvenience too many people for the hour or so the crossing was open.

By day’s end we’d clipped up all the concrete sleepers and cut the closure rails into the 60lb, one was easy and one of fell exactly 2 inches on the wrong side of a 60lb joint, so a half length of 60lb was cut in to give a good closure.

Today saw a further 315m of rail installed, bringing the weekly total up to 1064m (we did a calculation on site from memory but we underestimated, so gang we did even better!). That’s a massive effort for only one week! Only many thousand metres to go now!

Tomorrow, we’ve got a good list of jobs to complete before we’re ready to allow trains over at the weekend, lots of sleepers need changing and a good amount of tamping is required. Meeting at the Brown St. Pedestrian Xing from 8.15am.

As promised, further progress has been made, despite the wet afternoon.

We’ve re-railed the low leg over Pyrenees Hwy, which given all the harness and anchoring gear used to do it safely, was much slower than regular re-railing, however we still managed it in good time.

Here John and Will are looking very pleased as they survey the morning’s work. We’ve got some nifty gadgets that secure onto the head of the rail, to which the harness is anchored to.

We’ve installed a single 55m rail over the bridge, removing all joints on the bridge, which will be a massive bonus in years to come, not just for the sake of the bridge but for future joint maintenance.

We’ve got another 55m rail on site to do the other leg at some stage, at the moment that’s not a seriously high priority, given it’s already 80lb, but once we’ve completed the rest of the track we’ll come back to it.

We did slightly better than just the bridge, also installing another 41m of rail.

Tomorrow should see us complete to the end of the curve. Meeting around Brown Street Pedestrian xing around 8.15am. (Or Maldon at 7.45am)

Another extremely successful day today, with an additional 398m of 80lb rail installed, comfortably.

We did a fair effort first up to in regards to unfastening, however before too long that proved too conservative, as we had reached our end goal before lunch time. So we set to and had one crew unfastening ahead, one changing over and bolting up the rails and one behind clipping up, interestingly we were all keeping pace with each other!

It’s amazing just what a difference it has made to the appearance of the track. A lot of the dips and wiggles have disappeared and after a quick run through with the tamper, it’ll be like new track.

The 398m achieved today saw the UP leg re-railed from the down end of curve 5 (the curve on the Maldon side of Winters Flat Bridge) all the way to Pyrenees Hwy Bridge, where we’ve even cut a temporary Junction back to the 60lb to help us out in getting diggers and trolleys across tomorrow.

You would think all that was enough for one day, but no, we also fastened up 18 timber sleepers at the end of Winters Flat Bridge, straightened two severe cripples in the rail (we’ve discovered that using the Buda it’s really easy to do once in the track while it’s only clipped up 1 in 3) and planned the rest of the week’s work.

We’ll be out in force again tomorrow, as there won’t be any trains, due to the covid situation. So we should make even more excellent progress. Meeting around Pyrenees Hwy Bridge at 8am (ish).

Well on the first day of intensive re-railing, we’ve installed and bolted in 255m of 80lb rail, replacing old 60lb.

We stuffed around a bit, working out what the best processes/methods were but we’re still extremely happy and surprised by our efforts!

So today we remove all the fastening from the 60lb, swapped the rails over and we’ve clipped up the new rail at every concrete sleepers. The big digger proved very good at this task.

We’re yet to come back and fasten up the timber, but as the gauge is now held extremely well and everything is supporting the rail, if this doesn’t happen for a few weeks, it won’t be problem at all.

We’ll also do a thorough sleeper replacement before we do any spiking up, replacing any failed timber with concrete.

Now our process is in place, tomorrow should see at least 300m of rail installed, probably more as today saw lots of stuffing around to get ramps to the old 60lb and cutting closures to join the existing 80lb.

So far this method of re-railing is completely outstripping any previous method, as with just 4 people today, everything was achieved without silly amounts of effort or strain, which should be even easier tomorrow.

Meeting near Winters Flat Bridge from 8.15am or Maldon at 7.30am.