Today was spent preparing the next section to be resleepered, the short stretch to the curve. It’s unfortunate hard, dust and today it was also very hot work.

It’s been marked up and the concrete sleepers spaced out ready to go in where required. There is 300 sleepers to install to get down to the occupation crossing and another 25-30 to join up with curve 20.

It is probably a bit ambitious for next week’s weather forecast. However, it is certainly achievable before Christmas.

We’ll be into it in haste on Tuesday to try knock over as much as we can, the more hands the merrier, meeting at Maldon 8am on Tuesday.

The following is a collection of pics that show off the long stretch of concretes.

A very successful day today, getting up and over the crest of the rise.

It was a very nice feeling being able to look over the rise and see the concretes beyond, only a short gap to fill now!

Today saw us install 159 sleepers, all clipped up but awaiting a jack and pack.

We even had a guest visit today, Matt from McLeod Rail, coming to see how the pour cousins of the railway world make do with what they’ve got!

It’s hard to see, however the gap of remaining timber can be just seen behind the digger. Hopefully, with a concerted effort, next week should see that removed, giving us continuous concrete sleepers from Maldon to Pipeline Crossing.

Tomorrow’s crew will spend most of the day preparing for the next section, however if that goes to plan, we might get a few more sleepers installed. Meeting at Maldon at 8am or on site from 8.15am.

Tuesday’s are often our preparation day, however we got such a good headstart on Friday, we were ready to actually make a start on the job today.

In addition to doing more preparation and a few odd jobs at Maldon this morning, we’ve installed 60 concrete sleepers today, taking the minimum additional insertions this week down to 160, so very achievable.

We’re yet to give it a final lift. However, we’ve tweaked it enough to run over very safely tomorrow. By some weird fluke, our really temporary ramp back to timber is one of the best we’ve ever made… and it will only last one day.

Thursday and Friday we’ll be back out here, getting over the rise and as far down the other side as we can, we’re determined to remove all the timber in this section before the end of the year.

The weather is looking potentially wet, however in our planned task of getting a head start on more concrete sleepers, we should be able to duck for cover if need be.

Meeting at Maldon 8am.

Friday…

It didn’t take too long to finish off our inspection on Friday morning.

We quickly decided to correct a few issues in 2 road, lifting a significant dip and replacing a cracked fishplate.

Our attention was then turned to a bit of a hole that had formed between 2 and 3 roads in Maldon Yard, we had hoped for a glamorous mine shaft, with a hidden nugget just waiting for us to find.

It was quite disappointing to find it was only a 140 year old stump starting to rot out…

The hole was filled, compacted and topped with gravel to tidy it up. However, no gold was found, nor was there any sign of any…

The afternoon was spent marking up the next 220 sleepers (enough needed to get over the rise) on tangent 20-21.

All being well by the end of this week, we’ll be up and over the rise, leaving a very short section to go.