Another successful one today, with the 1 in 2 pattern completed to the end of Curve 18 (just behind the digger in this pic).

The ballast in this section is very organic, nice and rich garden gravel really these days! As anyone with a healthy garden knows, organic life leads to very rapid timber decay and that is exactly what we experienced through this cutting, well over 50% of the sleepers, although looking ok on top, we’re essentially none existent underneath. Now we’ve removed the organic matter (wooden sleepers) this issue should quite rapidly disappear. Once we’ve finished tidying up and cleaning the drains, it’s unlikely to give us much trouble. The beauty of this method, lifting the rails 6″ is that even installing sleepers in the steep cuttings, we’re not having to dig into the roadbed at all, so even if the ballast is substandard, it’s the same substandard it’s been for many years without any clay mixed in.

It’s looking pretty snazzy now, with such a long section completed. We’re still not finished clipping up this section yet, however that’ll only take a few hours tomorrow and it’s possible we’ll decide to do a bit more.

Meeting Maldon 8am or on site from 8.15am.

The glorious 51mm’s of rain hasn’t overly dampened our spirits and given how dry it was in the lead up, there is barely any mud around, the earth seems to have acted like a giant sponge.

We’ve aimed for a relatively conservative number this week, however given the progress of today we’ll likely achieve right through to the end of Curve 18.

We’ve managed to get approximately 30 sleepers under today and clipped up, which gives us a good chance of getting all the intermediates in and clipped up tomorrow.

Meeting at Maldon 8am or on site from 8.15am

A final squeeze to remove a few dips from this week’s section and installing a decent ramp for the Easter services has resulted in a very nice looking length of track.

Today’s gang also managed a walk through tidy up of the resleepered section as well as blowing the rocks from the sleepers and rail from this cutting right through to Pipeline Crossing and marking up all the sleeper spacings. All in preparation for after Easter.

The total so far is 1309 sleepers installed since the beginning of March, placing us well over halfway to Pipeline Crossing.

We were the unfortunately victim of some well scouted out theft again last night, mainly sleeper plates. Anyhow, some quick thinking by the Local Police in the early hours of this morning saw a suspicious vehicle intercepted, the vehicle seized, and subsequently, the plates returned to us! A very big thankyou goes out to the various local police stations for their actions. We greatly appreciate it. Please, if you see or hear anything suspicious, let the police know.

We’ll be back in earnest after Easter on the Tuesday, beginning at Maldon from 8am then out on site from 8.30am.

We finished the clipping up today before having a massive clean up of all the timber sleepers and general mess beside the track. We’re yet to squeeze up the ramp and dips in this recent section so that’ll be job one tomorrow, then we’ll spend the day preparing the next section, through to pipeline, ready for the big push after Easter to get through to Pipeline Crossing.

Tomorrow’s crew meeting at Maldon at 8am or on site from 8.15am.