British tracklaying record!

[jaigee]

On our local paper's website today:

http://www.nuneaton-news.co.uk/new-...-in-nuneaton/story-30011702-detail/story.html

A BRITISH record was set by rail engineers who laid a whopping 2,416 yards of new track between Nuneaton and Rugby while the nation enjoyed Christmas Day.

It proved to be the largest amount of track ever laid in a single shift as the Network Rail team worked around-the-clock yesterday (Sunday, December 25).

They used state-of-the-art track relaying machine during the operation, which also included laying sleepers, track and ballast.

A spokesperson for Network Rail confirmed to the News that it was a British record, adding: "This work is part of our Railway Upgrade Plan to provide a bigger, better railway. We have worked at more than 200 sites this Christmas with thousands of the orange army working round-the-clock to deliver these improvements."

 

[najaB]

That'd put Gromit to shame.

 

[richieb1971]

Great job. Its a shame that probably wasn't the most vital line to get done though. I've never had any issues riding that stretch.

 

[The Planner]

Depends on how old the track and how knackered it was, I wouldn't be surprised if it had already been pushed back from when it was meant to be done. Plain line track renewal always seems to be the first job shunted back in control periods.

 

[Ploughman]

What, Where and when was the previous record?
Because back in about 2000 or so We relaid 2200yd between Broomfleet and Gilberdyke in a single weekend possession, Sat night 22.30 - Monday 04.00 with Steel sleepers.
Oh and that was without a state of the art Track laying machine.

 

[Boodiggy]

Great job. Its a shame that probably wasn't the most vital line to get done though. I've never had any issues riding that stretch.

Depends what you mean by most critical. WCML is high speed and tonnage so will take priority over other lines, plus getting a blockade for the TRS train to deliver this length of renewal is better than a convential track renewal that would have taken numerous weekends.

 

[furnessvale]

Interesting. Probably is the single longest relaying item at one time but I do remember that in the late 1960s, early 1970s, when I worked at the Divisional Civil Engineer's office at Preston, we relaid 120 miles of the WCML, including reballasting most of it and installing CWR, in 12 months of normal weekend working.

To cap it all, we were constantly loosing prefab just before the job, diverted to the Long Drag to repair yet another short wheelbase wagon derailment that had ripped up 100s of yards of track!

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Depends what you mean by most critical. WCML is high speed and tonnage so will take priority over other lines, plus getting a blockade for the TRS train to deliver this length of renewal is better than a convential track renewal that would have taken numerous weekends.

From the caption to the NR twitter item on this, I believe the line involved was the Up Slow, so not the fast lines at all.
This was pretty much untouched during the WCRM project, so is probably life expired.
In the dark days of the gauge corner cracking crisis, it was the one stretch of track between Crewe and Euston not limited to 20/40mph for several weeks!
It was a great relief to be switched to the "Slow" line between Nuneaton and Rugby to get a brief spell of 75mph in before then next crawling section.

On track-laying records, the Central Pacific exceeded 10 miles in a day just before they met the Union Pacific at Promontory, Utah in 1869.
I don't think the track quality was very high though!