The gang joined us down at sunny Newport today, for what can only be described as a pretty massive effort!

Lots of gauging and driving dog spikes, first into sleepers and then onto point timbers during the afternoon.

As we were working in sidings, we’d periodically need to shunt the rolling stock out of the way, giving the gang a well earned breather.

It’s nice to feel at home sometimes, so steamrail thought they’d do what they could and had a K class in steam trundling around.

Today’s highlight was easily lunch time…. John discovered his hard boiled egg had missed it’s turn in the saucepan. He had to resort to sandwiches after he made a good mess cracking his raw egg all over his lunch box!

Lots of bolt tightening was also undertaken, another good use for the new electric rattle gun.

We inserted around 20 point timbers today, not a bad effort at all considering the cramped and awkward locations, over half have been spiked up.

Apart from one burst hydraulic hose, the job is progressing nicely.

We’re even giving the truck a holiday, by storing it under cover.

We’ll be back tomorrow, with mainly sleepers to go now.

Well we’re back at Newport and we haven’t wasted any time in making a mess of their yard.

Our small gang attacked 2 road today, 15 sleepers replaced and tied up and many more prepared. The other roads and several turnouts over this side of the yard will be done over the next two weeks.

We’re quite low on numbers so any assistance, even just half a day would be greatly appreciated, please contact ganger@vgr.com.au if you’re interested.

A very exciting bit of action today with two Franna’s on site to move the old guards van body.

Actually it was a bit of a non event, it was all over in about 30mins, nicely levelled and at home about 300m north of here.

The cloud of dust is the van about to be touched down in its new home. It certainly opened up the area and shows just how large our new engine shed will be!

As promised a few more shots of the much cleaner yard.

It really looks very impressive tidied up.

As part of these works we lose our current access roadway, so we spent some time removing the old sleepers from 5 siding ready to make way for our new roadway.

It’s all starting to happen and it’ll be very exciting once the building works start.

The next two weeks (starting Tuesday) will be more work for Steamrail down at Newport. Some of our recently removed timber sleepers will be heading down too to help complete the works. Seen here at Muckleford ready for transport.

If you’re Melbourne based and looking to spend some time on our gang, the next two weeks would be not only a great opportunity but it would be greatly appreciated! Please contact ganger@vgr.com.au if you’re interested.

Today was a massive clean up day in Castlemaine Yard, in readiness for the upcoming works.

We began by cleaning up the sleepers stacked (dumped) beside the carriage shed.

These were all nicely bundled and strapped by the crew for stacking up the far end of the yard.

We also had plenty of action around us while crew training was going on with the visiting S & B class.

We even relocated the water tank that was laying near the shunters cabin, to well out of the way for the upcoming works.

The afternoon was spent breaking up jointed rails and stacking them aside as well as many other clean up jobs.

A place was cleared ready to accept the guards van body that’s in the way of the new engine shed. We’ll no doubt use it as a crew hut during the works so it won’t be too far away from the action.

We even bundled up our spare point rodding and stacked it sensibly aside so it doesn’t get in the way.

More pictures to follow tomorrow but the whole area is looking amazing as our helpers from the prison set about mowing all the grass in the area. Tomorrow will see some action as the van body gets moved and we get the last of the rails etc… out of the way for the earthworks.