We’re down playing Turntables at Newport. A job we’ve not done a lot of, but it’s essentially bridge work which is a task we can handle with great ease.

The end timbers, where the locking mechanism sits are less than ideal, so we’re replacing them.

After a very late start and some minor truck trouble, we have done all the unbolting and even removed one timber. We’ll use this as the guide for preparing the new timber tomorrow and hopefully (if the rain holds off) get one if not both installed.

Meeting Newport from 8.15am.

What started out as a very productive day of dogging up sleepers, turned very wild and wooly, fast.

Before the storm however, we did manage to fasten up the majority of the sleepers up the straight, with only about 40 sleepers on one leg to go next week.

Unfortunately we ran into some trouble with the tamper, but while trackside assistance remedied the issue, the grabs deputised for lifting ready for drilling and boxing up duties.

It was very wet though, with one nearby property reporting 37mm of rain in an hour! A nice change to the hot dry of summer.

The storm was obviously very localised as the section near Pipeline Crossing has had the drains scoured, thankfully with no damage to the track.

There will be some drain cleaning required over the next few weeks to ensure we can handle a similar event should it occur.

Monday & Tuesday next week (possibly Wed if needed) will be at Newport Workshops, working on the Turntable. Start time for Monday will be a lesurly midday at the workshops, where as Tuesday will be normal time at the workshops.

Thursday and Friday we’ll be back out working on more sleepers.

After a few days of replacing sleepers, we’ve inserted 150 from Muckleford to the start of curve 15.

So far only around half have been spiked up, but they’ll get a good tamp tomorrow and there’s nothing that will prevent any trains running this weekend.

It started out as a very mild and incredibly pleasant morning… It did get very muggy by afternoon tea so we decide we’d done enough hard graft.

Bruce again showing us the advantages in being tall and strong when it comes to using the spike puller.

Malcolm has become the expert on inserting sleeper plates and marking up the new sleepers for drilling.

He’s also become very good at using our new plate hooks to remove sleeper plates while the digger lifts the rail. This method saves a lot of time and work.

The digger and very versatile new grabs made the changes very effortless. They’re great for removing plates, the old timber, cleaning out and re-inserting. Not to mention being able to squeeze up to allow for drilling and spiking.

They’ve proved a big winner, all we need now is to win the lotto so we can have a dedicated set on either digger (rather than swapping them over now as we do).

Tomorrow will be back here, tamping up the 150 installed and spiking up what we can before the rain (due early afternoon). Meeting Maldon 8am or site 8.15am.

We’re back on our own railway for a few weeks. After a big truck and excavator shuffle yesterday, today saw the start of work.

We’re working our way through a sleeper cycle from Muckleford to Maldon, replacing anything that is life expired. We’re using the best of the timber released from the Castlemaine section as part of the concrete sleepering program.

We started out fairly slowly today, changing the grabs over onto the Takeuchi and only having a very small group, however we still achieved a lot. We’re replaced 5 sleepers in tangent 13-14, another 7 in Curve 14a and we’re most of the way through 45 in curves 14b&c (the wiggles on the down side of Muckleford Creek Bridge). None have been spiked up yet, but we’ve got to leave something for Thursday’s Gang.

We’ll be out in force again tomorrow, with a later start time of around midday on site (we’ve got a few commitments first up) then again Thursday and Friday at the usual time.