The wiggly track over Muckleford Creek was tackled today. It’s a two part process. To start with the track is lifted a reasonable height (about 30mm) to remove all dips and to loosen it up for sliding/aligning.
The second part is to align the track, we didn’t get time to do that part today, but we did get the whole bridge lifted and what a difference it made.
Part of lifting is to ensure the deck below isn’t losing ballast, which in places it was. This was remedied in two of the worse locations, but it’s a very labour and time intensive job so we’ve still got more to do.
The gang even took the opportunity to realign a few skewed sleepers and replace a failing set of fish plates.
Here John’s re-drilling a sleeper which was moved away while the hole in the decking below was plated. We use any old sleeper plates which have no use to us in the track.
To ferry the plates and reduce handling, the yellow truck brought them close enough to the bridge to allow passing up, with Clive and Rolf having a breather between plate handling, while Mick digs out the next hole.
The whole bridge was jacked to a very nice uniform height before a tamping pass.
The amount of lifting was very evident after the tamp, with the bridge now needing more ballast. However that won’t go on until after the holes are plated and track is straightened.
It’s a bit hard to see, but the track is now a uniform height right across the bridge, something we just haven’t been able to get around to until now.
After next weeks re-railing and the following week at Korumburra, we’ll be back here to finish the job, after which we expect it to look like 60mph track!
In other news, one of our well wagons is going through the workshops next week (general maintenance) and Riley has taken the opportunity to finish the painting, thanks again Riley and keep up the good work.
Just a reminder, due to the public holiday there’s no workday tomorrow. But we will be back into it next week, Mon to Wed in Castlemaine & Thurs/Friday re-railing.
VGR Civil Blog 