That's very interesting.
To my eye, there are mountains of supplies stockpiled at Moreton (piles, masts, booms etc).
What supplies are they short of? Small piece stuff to go on the booms?
It's very evident that no registration gear has yet gone up.
To be honest we see exactly the same as you and we're baffled by it. There are men and machines waiting for materials but they are only releasing them on a week by week basis, i.e a mast may have a schedule for Thursday of week 17, thats when it will go out. But the crane may have done this weeks work, but it can't take that mast until the spec date
This is all well if possesions are on time and no problems, like the 3 hrs lost on Tuesday beause of the incident at Ealing, or track maintainance needing doing so limiting the available time and worksite of the OLE crews. Add in the safety side of always planning for the worst case that may never happen in a month of sundays, meaning lifting a mast in is a 2 lift job, 1 off the machine horizontally and into the cess, then resling and lift vertically into place, all because the sling may break if you lift it vertically straight off the machine and that could block the 2 open lines and cause a crash:roll::roll:
I think alot of the short stuff is the brackets for the booms, with the way they are planning it I would be very suprised to see any registration gear for a couple of months. Someone somewhere has a plan, would love to know it
Other delays come from minimal access points for machines, its taking nearly an hour from getting on track to get to the work location, so you have to leave earlier too.
TBH they have some very good linesmen teams on the ground, but they are not being backed up with the materials they need. They need to get a minimum of 2 weeks supply in front of the teams and preferably let them just keep going each night starting from one end of their section and working through. Over stock the machines each night (if the plan says they can do 10 brackets a night give them 15), then any extras done are a bonus. The OLE teams can pull some of the overrun back if they have the gear ready for them. And by that I mean if a section need 100 brackets of one type don't just order 100 order 120 as some bolts will be seized, some will get dropped and lost ect then bump the surplus onto the next section. The only time there should be a wait for materials is on the last few sections.
. Travelators from the east side would help and also an escalator from the subway to the main platform 3 / entrance. Perhaps taxis could collect pax at the new entrance on the space vacated by the demolished GPO Building in future?
