Went into Manchester today and coming back, it appears the mast majority of catenary is now in place, with the small number of gaps now getting shorter and the Castlefield Viaduct is now also fully wired up.
Not doing all that well, really.
Today the half-mile wiring gap in the Up (eastbound) line near the M602 roundabout was still there, despite the Down line having been wired about 3 weeks ago.
Further west at Glazebury, the gap of over a mile has been wired on the Up, but with only 2 of the 4 wires (the return and auto-transformer feed).
The similar gap in the Down still has no wires at all.
If you look closely at the wiring east of Glazebury, it is still very "unfinished", with odd unconnected cantilevers and droppers and bits of loose wire around.
The auto-transformer wire is missing on several stretches. I don't see it being powered up for another month at least.
Several big excavations have appeared on the south side of the viaduct towards Victoria between Ordsall Lane and Deal St Jns.
It's difficult to tell if these are for electrification work or maybe Ordsall Chord preliminaries.
On the Wigan branch I counted 61 masts in place on both lines west of Thatto Heath (more on the Down than the Up), including some of the larger lattice ones.
That seems to be a rate of about 10 masts a night, which seems good going.
No new foundation work that I could detect, they peter out soon after Bryn.
The work at Roby seems to be recovering the original brickwork from the old slow line platforms, rather than rebuilding them.
It's still difficult to see what is going on in that area as the main work seems to be strengthening of the north side of the embankment before construction of the new layout can start.
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