ChiefPlanner
Established Member
Yeah, well, I’ve mellowed a bit. I didn’t have much patience when the sun was coming up, I still had a big hole in the track, and control on the phone, I can assure you.
Nicely put - getting the railway back on time has to be the right thing (in BR days , I at a busy location in East Anglia) ,did not overly worry about late hand back of possessions as they were generally very rare. The trains ran on schedule pretty well , and there was often a lot of work done on a late Saturday - Monday am on 2 track sections. However, evidence of the commitment to a right time handback could sometimes be seen where spoil and dug out ballast was flung onto the cutting / embankment sides .......
There were slots for "tidy weeks" in the CE annual calender. But then there were different contractual rules applying.
(and as for strategic storage of "handy rail sections" etc for unplanned use - I recall a fairly modest but nasty derailment on a single line (freight only) - where re-opening was massively helped by some sections of rail being recovered from the trackside , assisted by a couple of wagons of clean ballast which just happened to be on hand in a nearby yard. Derailment 0930 - line open by 1500. Major customers kept served , albeit late.