On the theme of working in yards, Muckleford had 3 sections of 80lb rail whose head defects have been on our long term list for replacement.

In the down end mainline turnout, both the curved lead and straight closure rails had some notable defects, these aren’t recent, they’ve been there at least 30 years,  when installed these were all that was available. However we’re now reaching a point in our upgrade works where we can divert some attention to these less critical tasks.

It was a pretty simple remove and replace operation, doing only either the straight or curved sections at a time to allow the digger over the other one as required.

Lots of precision measuring and cutting was required as we didn’t have anything on hand that would drop straight in.

Given there is 30 years worth of wear difference some shimming was required but very little thankfully.

A few fishplates changes sped things up a bit and permitted a bit of fresh wood being available to cross bore into.

The third location was in the very UP end of 2 Road, same deal, just historic damage.

The new rail was cut in and spiked down in no time, well rehearsed after earlier in the day.

Besides the rust on the rail you wouldn’t even know we’d been there. Another annoying little job ticked off the list.

Next week will be business as usual, albeit a little quieter given some of us will be away for Cup Day, however the gang will still run for anyone interested.

As promised today saw us insert sleepers into Maldon Yard, mainly 2 road but a few were replaced in 1 road while we were in the area. A total of 38 sleepers were replaced today, which has removed pretty much all the truly life expired timber in the roads.

We’ve used the reasonble sleepers removed from the Maldon to Muckleford resleepering, they are far from new, however they’ll have a good few years of life in the yard yet.

Because the side access is so good, we tidied as we went today, it makes the job a bit slower but you save time at the end.

A handful of sleepers in 1 road saw it brought back up to a quite sturdy situation.

A quick squeeze of all the replacements and at a few dropped joints.

A good run over with the bucket and very good pass with the blower has left it quite tidy.

The blower operator however seemed to collect all the excess dirt personally!

Next Monday/Tuesday the weather is looking ideal to finish off burning the bonfires at Maldon, we’ve now also got another load of light up wood to go to Castlemaine. We’ll likely be making a start on the lineside slashing / handmowing around the crossings etc… next week as the grass is starting to brown off.

After a few weeks of catching up on Castlemaine jobs, this week has been dedicated to Maldon Jobs.

We’ve burnt bonfires, tidied sleepers and tomorrow we’ll replace 30 sleepers in 2 Road. Meeting at Maldon from 8am.

Sorry about the lack of recent blogs, however we have still been busy, focusing on replacing sleepers and point timbers around Castlemaine Yard. 59 sleepers and 5 point timbers were changed.

A lot of tidy up activity has also been undertaken around the general area while the machinery has been on hand.

We’ll be working the machinery back through to Maldon tomorrow, spot tamping several locations along the way.

We’ll be meeting at Maldon at 8am and Castlemaine Yard from 8.45am.