Another big day of rail towing. We’ve got about half of the loose rail over Goudges Ln towards Donkey Gully Road.

It’s been a big months worth of work, a big thank you to everyone that’s been involved. We’re having a break from this job for 3 weeks to get back onto some others.

Next week we’ll be back on our Railway, replacing sleepers in the Maldon to Muckleford section.

A big day, with an enormous amount achieved.

We completed the lifting and dragging of rail up to Godfrey Lane (about 550m).

While the Hyundai was out of action, we tested the takeuchi at sled dragging, with it doing about 480m of the 550m. An excellent effort but it certainly is much better in the hands of the more powerful machine.

We mixed up the method a little, with some pre-removal of 3 out of 4 bolts which helped speed things up.

By Lunch Bazz had worked his magic on the Hyundai and it was alive and kicking once again (it was a cooked solenoid!), thanks Bazz!

We used the big digger to pull the last few lengths of rail up. The gang is really getting the pattern of works down pat and with incredible efficiency. A true credit to their dedication.

They even played lollipop men… For the whole 1 car all day.

We had so many people today that we even started sorting the jewellery into rough piles for collection.

A quick video showing some more dragging, not really exciting but it shows how much friction a rail has when being dragged.

Dragging the 2nd last rail of the day over the sled.

Thankfully the sled helps guide the rail very well, however we do always stop before dragging the free end over, clearing everyone and everything out of it’s reach before sliding it across.

It’s incredible how much flick a rail can have when wandering free like this.

The end spot for today’s lifting. We’re certainly making excellent progress.

The late afternoon was spent up by the next crossing, towing rail through to Donkey Gully Road. This will be the bulk of tomorrow’s work too. It’s quite tedious and very time consuming, but it’s the only way to get it all to Castlemaine, so we’ll just keep plodding.

Tomorrow’s meeting place is Goudges Ln around 8.15am. (or leaving Maldon around 7.30ish).

Another big day of rail dragging. We’ve moved all but 5 lengths of rail across Godfrey Lane up Goudges Lane.

We got very efficient at using both digger in tandem to move rail quite fast. That was until we had an electric issue arise in the Hyundai… Hopefully we’ll have it back for tomorrow, but if not we’ll soldier on with the Takeucki.

We’re very fortunate to now how 2 diggers at our disposal, previously if we had a break down we generally had to stop work, but that isn’t such an issue these days.

We’ll be out in force again tomorrow, lifting more rail. Meeting Godfrey Lane around 8.15am or Maldon at 7.45am.

Another extremely successful day. Around 550m of track (1.1km of rail) has been lifted and towed up to Godfrey Lane.

A fresh gang keen to see the sled in the action.

It’s a pretty neat bit of kit. In some ways the track being so poor is working in our favour.

We’re able to tow on rail, speeding things up greatly. If the sleepers were in good condition, the resistance would probably be too great to tow on rail, but it’s working just like a zipper without straining the big digger. Perfect!

We’re towing up to the joints, breaking the rails, then dragging the loose rail over the sled and towards Castlemaine (for a suitable distance).

The horrendous job of anchor removal is greatly sped up by waiting until the sled has lifted the rail a little, much easier the knock them off when they aren’t buried.

Unfortunately we haven’t devised a super easy collection method for the anchors yet… But we will.

Both diggers were in full employment today, dragging rail. A process we’re now getting quite slick at.

Best off all… We’ve pulled up the mighty heat buckle. It’s nice to have that hurdle behind us.

We’ll be having a big tow day tomorrow, dragging as much rail as we can up towards Donkey Gully Road. Meeting Maldon 7.45am or Godfrey Lane 8.15am. We could use a hand or two… Just to help out with the little odd jobs.