Another successful one today, with around 150 additional sleepers inserted and clipped up. Not too many words today as it’s a carbon copy of the last few days , however lots of pics
We had all the toys in action today and had a great result.
It’s very surprising how easily and quickly this process takes the track from looking very rough and ready to looking extremely solid and sturdy.
We’re getting good at de-dogging with the Excavators, a real back and time saver.
The total count for sleepers so far this week is 296, hopefully we’ll get a few more in tomorrow, as well as finishing off the ramps and preparing the next section for next week.
Another extremely successful day, with another 30 odd sleepers inserted and clipping up, about another 30 inserted and yet to clipped up leaving about another 60 to insert tomorrow, it’s quite likely we’ll beat our weekly aim of 250 sleepers this week, possibly not by a great deal, as we will have a bit to do to fix up the ramps and geometry issues (however these are amazingly minimal, which is quite surprising).
Tomorrow’s crew will meet at Maldon 8am or on site from 8.15am.
Unfortunately the next few months will seem very repetitive, however while it’s still fresh and exciting we’ll describe the process in painstaking detail!
Yesterday’s very small crew got the track lifted 6 inches and inserted every fourth sleeper.
Today’s crew clipped all those up, removed all the remaining timber sleepers, using mainly just the digger to push them down (there is now plenty of room below them) and collect all that jewellery up before it got buried.
Then it was onto installing other 1 in 4 (meaning every second sleeper was installed), this is to prevent burying any unfastened sleepers – which immediately slows work to no end.
Followed up by the final pass where everything missing is inserted. No doubt we’ll adjust and refine this process in due course, however for now, this is easily the quickest we’ve ever installed 118 concrete sleepers! Just over 1.5 day’s work.
We’ve found a few tricks to improve things, such as sitting the sleepers up ahead of time for pad installation, otherwise it’s all gone pretty much exactly to plan!
We’ve decided to not worry too much about track alignment during the 1 in 4 install (it can move extremely easily), as it is extremely easy to re-align while only clipped up every fourth, by the time its 1 in 2, it’s a real struggle to move, once they’re all there… it’s only going to be a production tamper aligning it then.
So far, we’ve done nothing but line the track, the top has turned out as it is just by the act of lifting it, which is staggeringly good conpared to beforehand, we really should have taken a before pic. All the major dips have been very significantly improved, almost like smoothing a rough surface.
We’re very happy with how things are progressing and it’ll get about 200 times easier once the weather cools a bit more!
We’ll be out again tomorrow, meeting on site from 8.15am.
Well it’s March and we’re full swing into re-sleepering. Most of today was spent getting all the required bits and pieces out to site, however that went quite smoothly, so around 1130am we started pulling spikes. We’re hoping to make this process a very minimal handling exercise, so we’ve got a big bin to carry as we go collecting old jewellery.
Before long we were into lifting the track to height and inserting sleepers, a total of 30 were inserted today, around 10 clipped up. This is in a 1 in 4 pattern, so tomorrow’s crew will complete the clipping up, while the intermediate sleepers are removed, ready to begin inserting the remainder. This should give us a good head start with the project, this will also be our learning week, working out the best processes and quickest strategies etc…
Tomorrow’s crew will Meet at Maldon at 8am or out on site from 8.15am (about 1.5kms on the Castlemaine side of Bendigo Rd Crossing).
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