We spent all morning preparing for resleepering, however there wasn’t enough of us to make any significant start on changing any, however we’re well prepared for Thursday.

We did however have enough hands to complete the platform rebuilding works, the majority of this occurred on Monday, however the final touches were placed on it today.

We used a Lime Mortar, as it had been previously, except it turns out this isn’t the first repair here, as quite an amount of cement mortar was found in places and that is likely what caused it to fall apart, we just gave it a helping hand, however the historical patch has certainly damaged a few bricks. We’ve repaired what we could, one day and probably with a lot of money it will need to be pulled right back to ground level and rebuilt in this corner – it’s very likely there is little to foundation left.

The funny coping stone angles are no actually from our repair, they were like that previously, we didn’t gave a lot of scope to modify that unfortunately but it’s at least as good as before and hopefully better.

Once the mortar has properly hardened, likely to be a few weeks, we can give it all a proper clean up.

Various other odd jobs were tended to also, which was nice, however it’ll mean we’ve got a few big days Thursday and Friday to ensure we can complete the resleepering this year. Meeting Maldon 8am on Thursday.

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.