Making Tracks

Well I awoke early this morning and unable to sleep I quietly left the house with my camera and drove over the Forth Road Bridge to grab this shot of the track renewal crews that were working at Dalmeny Junction putting in new crossovers and track work with there crane lifting a section of panel onto the new flattend section of ballast in a 24/7 railway as even when there are no passenger trains running over the festive period for a couple of days they are always working with the freight companys renewing the rail network I can remember in my freight days working on Christmas day and Boxing day and it took me back to a day I won't forget I had cycled to work many years ago as my car was off the road I worked my train into platform 17 at Waverly so they could lift the track from the bay platform 18 only for them to burst a water main that filled the bay to platform level that you could have swam in the bay so I thought good I might get an early finish only to be redirected to another train in Princes Street gardens that was requiring to be moved through the double track section of the mound tunnel it had one of the lines lifted whilst the guy on his wee dump truck was moving around in the tunnel when I proceeded through the tunnel on the other line at 5mph then I heard an almighty rumble and as I had a pair of class 37's the rear engine and first wagon derailed in the tunnel oops due to the set of points being clamped but one of the rails was disconnected and it caused the tip of the points to move derailing the train so that Christmas Engineering project was a disaster I ended up 14 hours on duty and to top it off cycling back to Livingston I got a puncture on my bike at the west end of Princes Street arrggghhhh so it was a really long day especially at Christmas but I did get £40 in gift vouchers for staying with my train even after it was derailed until another driver came out thankfully I was not to blame for that but all great memories all the same now then movie for the day is "Trackdown 1976"See Ya