Another pallet of fishplates today, getting us quite close to the bridge now – less than a pallet to go!

Tuesday’s crew also did another pallets worth, so we’re getting very fluent now.

We then moved our focus to Muckleford Creek Bridge, where this victim is this failed timber beam – failed due to end splitting (which is hard to see in the pic). All being well, late next week will see some more action here.

We also knocked over all of the clipping up! We’ve gone extremely well, and now that we’ll quite possibly never install fastclip sleepers again, we’re very quick at it!

Monday’s crew will do another pallet of plates, starting Maldon 8am or near the creek bridge from 8.30am.

A very successful day today, with another 24 pair of fishplates changed heading down towards the Bridge.

Today was the first cool morning for a while, and we did have one joint that needed a little adjustment from the nearby rails to go back together. We find this work is better in the warmer weather, as if it’s too cold, you can find yourself in a spot of trouble trying to get all the rails to bolt up – it really does expand and contract with the weather.

We’d be just under half of the way to the bridge by now.  That kept us entertained until morning tea.

The afternoon, albeit without photo evidence (sorry we forgot), saw us clipping up the fastclip sleepers between Chapmans Lane and the Bridge, at the end of last year we were awaiting an order of biscuits to complete this task, which are now all on hand and today saw about a third of the sleepers clipped up.

Tomorrow’s activities will be more of the above, another pallet of fishplates, then onto more sleeper clipping – which we may very well come close to knocking over tomorrow.

Due to the hot weather, we’ve cancelled tomorrow’s workday.

Things look like they’ll be back to normal next week.

A good selection of odd jobs were completed last week, with a good number of those cut fishplates installed in preparation for the resleepering.

The end is now in sight – down at the Bridge.

The blowers have been run along to permit the sleeper marking, we’ll do this progressively as we start to replace sleepers.

Muckleford Station received a good tidy up, now looking very smart after its haircut.

The week saw a few other odd jobs attended to as well, including loading a wagon at Muckleford with 80 low profiles for Castlemaine works. (During Feb V/line shutdown)

Cut up a tree that had fallen over roadway near donkey farm track.

Given the very hot weather predicted for tomorrow (Tuesday), there will be no workday. The jury is still out on Thursday. However, it may be a half day if anyone is interested – watch this space.