The turnout job has come along extremely well today, it would have been even better except for a digger hose blowout this afternoon… getting the right fitting used up the afternoon, however we’ll be right to go tomorrow.

We’ve used a mix of dogs and screws, based very heavily of what we removed previously and what didn’t need lugging too far to re-use, however we’ve kept them localised to areas to make it easier in the future.

It didn’t take very long at all to get the last of it all fastened up, which was good.

At which point we setup the laser again and set about lifting the straight leg to the correct height, before we covered everything in ballast.

Needless to say that the laser does do a better job than the one eyed kneeling over squint thing, as we managed to get it looking very nice.

It was only at this point we poured enough ballast around to allow this to be tamped, this saved an enormous amount of effort.

It came up very nicely, we’ve even lifted the other side of the turnout to level, ready to apply ballast. It was at this point things broke, however it’ll be an easy first up thing tomorrow, adding more rock and squeezing.

During the down time, the last of the fastenings were removed from the timbers, all were marked for length for potential re-use, tomorrow we’ll stack these up out of the way.

Tomorrow should be quite an easy day, with just ballasting, tamping , fitting of the spreader bars and point lever to go. Meeting at Maldon from 8am

Another successful day today with the new turnout, with all the closure rails cut, drilled and bolted in.

Some very minor final lining still needed before we spike it up tomorrow, however we should be able to get it ballast ready in no time in the morning.

Tomorrow we’ll be meeting at Maldon from 8am.

We had a very successful day today, but first a couple of yesterday’s destruction job, lifting the old one out in panels, this isn’t always the easiest, but it was mostly buried, so in this case it was much easier!

We then spent a considerable amount of time excavating the old gravel ballast to the correct depth, amazing what you can achieve with a lazer level! Believe it or not, this section of the yard is dead flat, it certainly appears to the naked eye to be on quite a slope. We’ve gone down to the base of the old gravel layer, making sure not to touch the clay layer beneath, if we need extra height, we’d be better off to lift everything a few inches as we get access to ballast, rather than dig down into the clay.

Once we’d marked up our datum lines, it was onto the task of dragging the new turnout into position, however we must confess, in the process of dragging it across, it has ended 3mm further Down than the survey marks indicated it should be… we think we’ll be happy to live with that.

We then spent quite some time lining it, which now looks stunning from both directions when sighted through.

The intermediate timber sleepers were marked up and dropped out.

Then the rails to make up the closures were roughly dropped out, no cutting today due to the total fire ban and extreme weather (not as extreme as in other locations in the state thankfully), that’ll be tomorrow’s job, during the cooler weather.

A keen eye might have noticed one concrete sleeoer in the new works, its not going to be staying, rather it is a test job, testing out the new pads and biscuits that arrived today, ahead of resleepering job. These old VR sleepers aren’t standard, required unique pads and biscuits, thankfully when buying in decent quantities the prices for these items come very close to standard biscuit and pad prices, however there’s very few out in the wild for 80/94lb as generally these sleepers were used with bigger rail.

It’s not exactly luck, as there is an engineered drawing for there use with smaller rail, however we can confirm that with 80lb, the gauge is exactly 1600mm! These biscuits are Brown/grey, so a bit different to the normal black ones.

All being well we should comfortably knock this job over this week, a bit of tweaking is required to finish the 3 road connection, however it’ll be usable in some fashion by the weeks end.

We’ll be on site all day tomorrow from 8am, if anyone is interested in helping cut, drill and bolt rails.

Friday saw the 3 road components of the 2/3 road turnout removed at Maldon, with today seeing the whole thing lifted and beginning of preparations to get the new one in, hopefully tomorrow.

We even found the time to get 2 tipper loads of ballast up to the Yard, from a stockpile at Woodlocks ln on Friday, for when it’s time to ballast later this week.

Tomorrow’s forecast to be a bit warm and uncomfortable, however the fire danger rating, unlike other bits of the state, is still low enough for us to work, so we’ll at least make a good start at it and see how we go, we may end up having an early day. Meeting at Maldon from 8am.