On account of the forecast rain, we’ll call off civil work for Monday. It’s looking pretty good for the rest of the week so Tuesday should be business as usual, meeting Castlemaine Yard from 8am.

After the success of the past week, today saw us knock over all the tidy up tasks quite efficiently.

We began by bundling up the timber sleepers. Out of the 112 timbers replaced, 92 came out in one piece, and 80 of those were reasonable. Only about 5 of them could be classed as good, however.

We then used the opportunity to remove a few problem and fallen trees beside the track around Castlemaine Yard. There’s a lot more to go. However, those trees are very hard to access.

The recently finished section was then given a blow for the full length to show the fastenings, making future inspections easier, it also looks very smart being so consistent. Any missing clips or loose bolts were tended to also.

The V/Line works are continuing at a great rate. We haven’t imposed upon their worksite to get any close-up shots.

Given the success of our endeavours and the success of Barry Dunn and his crew in repainting the previously removed water column, we thought we’d have a crack at getting it back up.

It all went very smoothly and certainly does improve the overall appearance of the area.

The fresh white paint of the sign and coloumn certainly stands out now. Hopefully, as time goes on, we’ll be able to start repainting all the fixtures around the yard.

All that’s really left now to complete the job, given that we also fail mowed out in the work area today, is to do a weedspray pass tomorrow and we’ll hand our permit to foul back to V/Line so they can progress with their works. It’s been a very successful weeks’ work!

Next week is a little up in the air, it may well be wet, check back on Sunday night for an update.

We’ve had an extremely successful few days, with 112 concrete sleepers being installed, clipped up, tamped and ballast boxed up. The weather was much kinder today, compared to yesterday’s stormy humid conditions that were awful, but we still managed to get a good amount done.

It’s not as pretty as the production tamped and regulated Vline track, however, it’s looking pretty snazzy. A bit more work with the blower and it’ll look quite tidy.

With the exception of the turnout to V/Line track, we’ve now got 100% concrete sleepers between the Yard and Forest Creek Bridge.

V/line are still working on waterproofing works at Johnstone Street Bridge and will be for a few days, some of that work will involve replacing a few of the timber sleepers that still existed in our track in that area, meaning we’ll likely be left with only a dozen or so timber sleepers in this section to remove in a future shutdown.

Although the sleepers are in, our work isn’t yet complete, we still need to bundle up the timber, now, remove and spray the lineside growth and generally tidy up the area.

Tomorrow’s crew will meet at Castlemaine Depot at 8am.

Although the temperature wasn’t too hot for day 1 of the concrete sleepering beside Vline, the humidity and sun made it extremely unpleasant.

Even still, it was quite a successful day, with approx 130 timber sleepers unfastened, 12 concretes installed and clipped up, and approx 60 timber sleepers pulled, the job should go relatively smoothly.

Tomorrow’s weather is looking average, however hopefully the morning will be okay, we’re expecting by lunch time the rain might beat us, however we’ll just wait and see – any travellers are probably wise to postpone. Meeting Castlemaine Depot 8am