It’s done!!

After a massive week, the re-sleepering job is now done! And it looks (almost) as good as V/Line’s track.

Today started with the whole crew, playing pick up sticks. All the smaller bits of old sleeper were loaded onto the wagons, which with all these hands was quite a quick job. The works train was then dispatched and the main gang moved onto re-railing prep near Bendigo Road.

Next was lots and lots and lots of ballast moving. The digger can do 99% of it, but we also had a small crew working along where the digger can’t reach.

The rock moving took until lunch, after which all the concrete sleepers were tamped, which took a while.

Followed by a final scraping of the ballast and filling in the tamping holes.

A lot of effort was also spent scraping away the overly thick ballast shoulder on the right, hopefully making next time much easier (as we had to dig out by hand just to find the dog spikes).

Overall, we ended up with a very very nice looking piece of railway. Clive had the unforgiving task of filling in holes with a ballast fork. (caught here mid drink after finishing the last one, once again the weather was hot and horrible).

Malcolm had the job of blower operator, we recently purchased a big back pack blower. It works incredibly well and shoots dust everywhere, poor Mal had a layer of dirt over ever inch of him by the time he was done!!

It’s now job done and onto the next!

We would like to thank V/Line for all their help, organising permits etc… and providing their staff to assist us in being able to foul their track while we undertook these critical works.

A massive thankyou to everyone who helped, a big thank you to the gang from the Pichi Richi Railway who gave up their holidays to drive all the way over and help! We couldn’t have done it without them or any of our hard working volunteers. We really can’t thank our track gang volunteers enough!! We think you’re the real Hero’s of this railway.

Tomorrow and Saturday are now re-railing days, as we felt we haven’t tortured ourselves enough this week!! Meet Maldon from 7am or Bendigo Road Crossing from about 7.15am.