Besides tidying up the last of the broken sleepers, checking and lubricating the turnouts, we tackled a few other odd jobs at Muckleford today.

The main being the installation of a small retaining wall, at the down end 2 road turnout.

We managed to make good use of the cordless band saw, to trim some old 60lb rail to the correct lengths needed – just magic these tools.

We then rammed home a few uprights before placing 6 rails to help gain us the height we needed to reach flush with the turnout timbers, backfilled with some dirty ballast that’ll still drain.

We’re extremely proud of how our little wall turned out. We had intended using an old point timber as edging, but in reality that’s just making one more job for future us to worry about, we’re quite happy with just doing the job once we’ve decided.

It’ll make accessing the point levers a million times easier and safer, only just all the bridge abutments and 4 or so more turnouts to be completed in a similar fashion to this now!

We more or less decided to make today the final Friday gang for this year, Will will still be around should anyone get kicked out of home during the preparations for Christmas, however it’ll likely consist of exciting jobs like cleaning out the back seat of the gang truck, doing a detailed track patrol and tidying up the paperwork.

Tuesday and Thursday next week will still be running as normal, check back Monday night for details of Tuesday.

We had a successful day today, with the rerailing completed without much hassle at all.

Before…

After. It’s very much a carbon copy of what we did at the other end a few years ago. With the aim to remove a few rough joints and reduce the maintenance in these high traffic locations.

We secured the remaining timber sleepers with pandrol adapters. This should extend their useful life by a few years.

We then set about replacing 2 point timbers at the down end, correcting a minor gauge fault there also.

Correcting the minor gauge issue at the toe of the points, of course, meant that the interlocking needed a full readjustment and check to ensure all was well.

The most challenging part of the day was tightening / replacing V crossing bolts in the down end 3 road turnout, to help stop the crossing moving as much under traffic, the bolts were extremely stubborn.

Today’s photos are slightly blurry, due to a slight technology issue that we couldn’t resolve, sorry about that.

Tomorrow’s crew will meet at Muckleford from 8am to finish off a few odd jobs before the weekend.

We had a very successful, if not a bit hot, day at Muckleford.

We replace 19 sleepers in the curve at the UP end of 1 road, in a rough 1 in 3 pattern, to ensure we can hold gauge and to allow for the re-railing of the high leg of the curve to remove a few issues with joints. If the weather Thursday is kind enough, we’ll change the rail then, as we’ve now got a joint which we can’t secure up properly given we had to change fishplates to use the concrete sleepers.

We’ve replaced 5 point timbers in the down end 3 road turnout, the rest of the timber is quite reasonable, however these 5 were particularly bad, one of these was under the point lever, which was becoming an issue, corrected now however.

On Thursday and Friday we’ve still got a few timbers to replace in the next turnout and we’ll potentially even have a go at straightening the very bent point blade.

Thursday’s gang will meet at Maldon 8am or our at Muckleford from 8.15am.

We had a very successful, if not a bit hot, day at Muckleford.

We replace 19 sleepers in the curve at the UP end of 1 road, in a rough 1 in 3 pattern, to ensure we can hold gauge and to allow for the re-railing of the high leg of the curve to remove a few issues with joints. If the weather Thursday is kind enough, we’ll change the rail then, as we’ve now got a joint which we can’t secure up properly given we had to change fishplates to use the concrete sleepers.

We’ve replaced 5 point timbers in the down end 3 road turnout, the rest of the timber is quite reasonable, however these 5 were particularly bad, one of these was under the point lever, which was becoming an issue, corrected now however.

On Thursday and Friday we’ve still got a few timbers to replace in the next turnout and we’ll potentially even have a go at straightening the very bent point blade.

Thursday’s gang will meet at Maldon 8am or our at Muckleford from 8.15am.