Three things were tended to today.

The first was patching holes in the decking of Muckleford Creek Bridge. It’s a terrible job, lots of manual digging of ballast and the like but unfortunately essential to maintain a good track.

We aquired lots dual gauge sleeper plates from Bandiana, we have no use for them, except for patching holes in bridge decks.

All thrown up onto the bridge ready for installing.

The second task was the straightening, track rather than bridge as it’s much easier to move. This was focused on the UP end to complement the work done previously on the DOWN end. Even using a stringline just to ensure perfection!

As the rail heads are well worn, the spike holes in the sleeper plates are often a better guide for this work.

And by days end it was looking very snazzy! With the crew taking one last look over their hard work.

A bit more to finish off next week and then we can tick this job off the list.

The other job for today was mowing the long trackside grass around Castlemaine, before the mower decided it had had enough for the day, simple fix but this should all be done by Monday.

Tomorrow will be in at Castlemaine, doing lots of odd jobs. Meeting Maldon 8am or site from 8.30am

The past few days we’ve been back into trenching at Castlemaine.

About 3/4 of the way down the carriage shed is as far as we could go for now, without moving the track. Eventually it’ll go another 100m-ish along the full carriage shed (once built).

Conduits for electricity and NBN are now in, with the plumbing going in tomorrow, ready for backfilling before the heavy rails predicted this weekend.

Tomorrow the gang will be at Muckleford Creek Bridge tending to more lining and decking repairs.

Meet Maldon 8am or site from 8.30am.

Well it was an absolutely mammoth effort, but we’re done! The heat, the sweat, the dust and hard work are now behind us! For now anyway.

Thankyou enormously to our dedicated volunteers who really went above and beyond this week, we couldn’t have done it without you.

We’ve only just arrived back at Maldon, so we won’t be working Tomorrow, the 11hour days and long drives have taken their toll.

We’ll be back into things next week though.

Before we’d even started we’d tied up Bazz!

The main focus of the day was fastening up the sleepers. While we were waiting for all the crew to arrive another 50 were inserted, leaving only 44 for tomorrow.

The V crossing was also spiked up, check rail corrected and a few test trains run – all is good.

A lot of using the jackhammer manually (carrying it) is required in this job, not a lot of fun.

But thankfully we have use of the loco and flat wagon, making access much easier.

John and Bruce joined us today, doing most of the heavy lifting and spike driving.

We sent Bazz up as driver at the end of the day… Which went well until he discovered the sanding lever

And with only this one sleeper requiring spiking out of about 15, he managed to drop a very decent pile right where we needed to work, thanks Bazz!

We did have a very successful day. We’re now over half way with the spiking, but we’ll still have a full day tomorrow, at the least.