Today saw us dodge (sometimes successfully) rain showers as we replaced 14 failed timber sleepers in the platform road at Muckleford.

This wasn’t overly onerous as we were using concretes as the replacement.

We also tackled a couple of point timbers that missed the last round of changes, 1 in the Dock road and 1 in the down end 1/2 road turnout.

Always an awkward endeavour on these 80lb turnouts, the point chairs are designed to almost impossible to get the sleeper fastenings past the chair bolt! There are a few tricks that can be used, but they are time-consuming.

The next timber was not as bad, however all the fixing locations had gone bad, so it’s easier to swap to a freshy and cascade this to somewhere less critical.

There was a notable gauge fault, non critical, but certainly likely to worsen over time, so bringing all this back to gauge was the main reason for the works – this wide gauge is quite historic, hence once corrected, some significant turnout and interlocking adjustment was required.

We’ve adjusted everything back to its happy neutral spot and checked its correct operation, some slightly bent blades always increase the difficulty in making this work smoothly however we’re very happy with the resulting job.

The Pedestrian crossing at the UP end of the station was refinished with some clean road-base, and with this afternoon’s rain, it should settle nicely.

The gang was sent home early today due to rain, however the diggers hung back to drop out additional concrete sleepers down towards the Bridge ahead of the resleepering work recommencing next week. Our materials have arrived and were ready to go!

Monday is a public holiday, so there is no Workday, however Tuesday and Thursday will be workdays, meeting Maldon 8am or Donkey Farm Track from 8.30am.

Given the forecast of wet weather for tomorrow, we’ve decided to call off the workday. Thursday will definitely operate as normal, meeting Maldon 8am or Muckleford from 8.30am.

Today saw us tackle the UP leg of 1 road at Muckleford.

The rails have been swapped and largely clipped up, with much more to do tomorrow.

We even had another driver experience pass us by.

Tomorrow’s crew will meet at Maldon at 8am, or at Muckleford from 8.30am.

A few photos from Thursday’s effort are below…

The new rails were dragged up and a replacement check rail was found for the Dock road turnout.

All in readiness for Monday.

A driver experience train crossed our path on Thursday, making a very welcome break in works.

Using 2 road one way due to our works but right to head home through the platform as we’d finished off by the time of the return.

Sorry for the lack of recent blog posts, it certainly hasn’t been due to inactivity.

Last week saw us undertake some quite different odd jobs, including the removal of several geometry issues at Maldon.

It was over a long section, so the trusty laser was used to make it much quicker, which it worked very well for.

We recovered 3 stay concrete sleepers that slid down embankments during resleepering several years ago… can’t rush these things, can you.

A large number of sapling regrowth around the level crossings at Muckleford were removed and poisoned – greatly improving visibility around those.

However, it was all leading up the rerailing of 1 road Muckleford. For years we’ve been inspecting the rail along here- all reclaimed 80lb rail of less than good quality, saying wouldn’t it be nice to replace this with some better rail. We’ll that’s what we did this week.

Monday’s crew pulled spikes and clips before the rail was swiftly swapped.

We’ve replaced the old various length rail with 41m 80lb rail, meaning along the whole platform there are now only 3 joints rather than the 15 or so there previously.

Monday’s crew also found the energy to break up most of the old rail, before being rained out in the afternoon.

Tuesday’s crew ran along and did the clipping up first, followed by a bit of lining work to remove the odd twists and kinks that the old rail insisted on conforming to.

Sleeper plates were installed, holes drilled and dog spikes driven. Resulting in the Down leg being all but complete!

There are one or two minor jobs to do tomorrow, but essentially it’s all done. However it’s now time to prepare to rerail the UP leg, we’ll move the rock, prepare the new rail and generally gear ourselves up to start rerailing the up side tomorrow, with the aim to make that next week’s project.

Tomorrow’s crew will meet at Maldon 8am or at Muckleford from 8.30am