Wet… it was wet, so what better fun could we have than go play in the mud!!

The Maldon Workshop building was well overdue for some plumbing maintenance, it was very quickly decided we’d go with new downpipes as the old gal had completely rotted through.

Our smoothing of the ground had actually done a good job of draining the rainfall. However, given this whole side of the shed was dumping there also it did get a bit muddy!

We’ve installed a very no-nonsense stop block at what is now the headshunt end.

And all new downpipes have been fitted and run into the drain – and it works!!! We also installed a third downpipe to lessen the load of the other two.

Next week, we’ll sleeve this cross pipe in an old section of old boiler tube to keep it safe. However, at least this should drain and let things begin to dry out properly now.

You’ll notice how much lower the ground is that shed level, we’ll use this opportunity to correct that and bring it much closer to height, which is why we’re not worried the downpipes kick out at the base, this will largely end up buried.

Monday will, all being well, be an intense day of mechanised destruction, pulling up the remaining track and ground fixing. Hopefully Tuesday sees some new turnout bits beginning to take shape.

The destruction has begun!

Unfortunately, we had a bit of previous digger destruction that had to be fixed prior to getting into the fun stuff.

That was successful, and before long, we were into profiling the drain, removing any extra fill and tidying up, ready to remove the headshunt.

A quick glance at the state of the rail foot in the above pic shows why we chose the brutal approach here… it is beyond had it! Thankfully, this is an incredibly limited use area, but it was certainly beyond being reliable for any longer.

The rails were towed away in strings to be dealt with at a later time, however there wasn’t too much left behind to collect.

Once the headshunt was out of the way, we lifted the first section of the 2/3road turnout, pulling apart what we could as we went.

The curved rails were also removing, leaving only just enough of the straight bit to act a headshunt for this weekend’s trains.

The telehander really came into its own for levelling and compacting the ground. We won’t be removing any fill, rather we’ll use the opportunity to raise the track level slightly and just apply clean ballast above.

As part of the work we’ve lifted a few panels from 3 road, up the coal stage, likewise this needed some attention, although not really from a track perspective more for drainage, being steel sleepers in panels its extremely easy to pull up and cart away.

Given there is some decent rain predicted and one of the primary reasons for this work is the poor drainage, we’ve dug some temporary open drains to get that water away if it does deluge as planned.

It’s pretty agriculture, but it’ll do during the work. From Monday we’ll be lifting everything remaining up to the roadway so it can have the same treatment, levelling and grading to allow the water to leave the area rather than keep collecting and causing the track to sink (it’s obviously settled around 100mm from its original level here).

We’ve got several other tasks to undertake while we’ve got this accessible. 1 being to fix the shed downpipes and actually give them somewhere to discharge to (they have just been soaking the track for years), we’ll look at getting some power across from the workshop to our area and we’ll hopefully get a few repairs undertaken on the shed and fencing also. We’ll begin tackling that tomorrow, weather permitting.

8am at Maldon tomorrow, be prepared it could be a little wet, however at least we’ve got some shelter if it is.

We ran a works train today, for the purpose of getting all the gear we need up to Maldon for our next small project.

We’ll be renewing both turnouts and the headshunt at Maldon. Everything in this area has only ever seen minimal maintenance and its fair to see its condition highly reflects that. Almost ever rail you can see in this picture has signs of heavy corrosion of cracking, so before it does let us down, we’re going to replace it!

We’ve begun by remove some excess soil from beside the track, it was some of the most glorious garden soil you’ve ever seen, but it wasn’t ideal for building railways on, so we’ve reused it to landscape the edge of the loading ramp to make the task of mowing much easier.

We’ll be lifting everything from the compound gates to the end of the headshunt, levelling the gravel and starting again – as what’s there will be excellent road-base, it’s just not high enough these days to permit drainage needed (things tend to settle as the centuries roll on!)

We’ll begin this exciting task on Thursday, unless the rain is torrential, but we’ll leave just enough to run around trains until next Monday, when it’ll all come up.

Thursday’s gang, weather permitting, meeting at Maldon from 8am

We very comfortably managed another 80 concrete sleepers today. We’re well on the way to getting this section complete.

It was all very usual and routine today, nothing too exciting or out of the ordinary.

By early afternoon we’d knocked over all the clipping up and were able to complete all of the usual Friday jobs such as tidy up, jacking and sleeper bundling.

Following the squeezing and minor dip correction (which was actually worse before hand anyhow!) It has come up looking very smart. We’re well over half way to the crest of the hill and we’re still hopeful of knocking it over this year, although this job in the warmer weather isn’t great fun.

Tomorrow’s crew will be up at Maldon, making a head start on our next project up there, meeting around the depot from 8am.