Sleepers

Just one pic today, the 2nd pass of sleepers are now inserted and clipped up, leaving tomorrow as an action-packed day of inserting the remainder.

There won’t be a formal workday tomorrow, as it will be a day of excavator work to get the sleepers under and tidy up the timber sleepers etc etc…

Thursday however will be all systems go from 8.15am on site (8am at Maldon) to get everything clipped up. If all that goes to plan, we’ll likely do an extra 50 or so sleepers on Thursday Afternoon.

Curve 19

Another successful day. However, it did end up a bit hot and humid by the afternoon.

We managed to get the 1 in 4 treatment complete around Curve 19 today, putting us in a good place tomorrow to start the infill.

It looks quite good from the vantage point up on the hill.

Tomorrow’s weather is looking like possible rain, however we’ll plan on working as normal, meeting Maldon 8am or on site from 8.15am, if the rain gets too heavy we might call it an early day.

Sleepers

A massive day today, although only one picture to show for it.

We’ve collected, sorted and bundled all the loose timber sleepers, which leaves the job looking really clean.

We’ve marked up next week’s work, the next curve, which was around 300 sleepers, so should be easily achieved next week.

We even found time to install an additional 19 sleepers before squeezing up the ramp, which, although not a lot, is an hour or two we dont need to worry about next week.

Next week, being our first full week of work, we’ll focus the workdays around Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, keeping Wednesday as a digger day getting sleepers inserted.

We’re looking a bit light on for gang numbers on Monday, so any extra hands would be appreciated, meeting Maldon 8am or on site from 8.15am

Sleepers

We’re now well and truly over the crest of the hill and into the short straight section between the curves.

It didn’t take too long to get yesterday’s insertions clipped up, that was pretty well behind us by morning tea.

We lifted a small dip that had come from the ramp we installed last week, which took about 5 minutes, before moving on to reach the end of this curve.

The next few sleepers were marked up and spikes pulled.

Both diggers we in action this afternoon, which makes the job about 200 times easier, the extra grunt from the big one makes lifting the track just a little higher to get a stubborn sleeper in much easier in these tight cuttings.

We got quite swift at things after a while, making cuttings seem much less onerous.

By day’s end, that was an additional 60 on top of Tuesday/Yesterday’s 260, taking this week’s total to 320, very similar to last week.

We’ll likely not insert any additional sleepers tomorrow, however we’ll tidy up all the timber, mark up the next curve and make as many preparations as we can ready for Monday morning, next week will be our first full week (and also the last for a another few weeks!)

Meeting out on site from 8am tomorrow morning (by the piles of timber sleepers).