Without the digger available (it’s almost fixed, thankfully not as serious as we suspected), it was a case of clip up everything we could. It’s rare to see both Will and Bruce this excited about clipping up sleepers!
We spent around 2 hours clipping up the first 50 sleepers, requiring the use of the porta power to spread the gauge to get the biscuits in, however the remaining 127 took less than 2 hours to clip up, only requiring the gauge to be adjusted twice! This is simply due to very slight differences in the gauge when this track was re-laid in 2002/3, it’s only a mm or two tight but concrete sleepers aren’t forgiving to any discrepancy.
The finished job gets us a long way towards finishing this project to Midland Hwy, really it’s only a few curves to go now.
As we’d finished our clipping up by lunch time, we looked at the ominous sky and decided we’d head into Castlemaine to check out the new loco shed. It’s big and looks impressive! It’ll no doubt feature a lot in coming months as we begin track construction.
The afternoon, despite the occasional strong hail downpour, was successful. We loaded our civil train with the concrete sleepers stacked by Woodlocks Ln.
The bigger machine is an enormous benefit when handling heavy sleepers, easily moving twice the number of sleepers the small digger will with far more than twice the stability with nowhere near the strain on the machine.
Around 300 low profile sleepers were loaded here, more of less clearing out the site.
It’s been wet… And wet means getting bogged. Thankful this digger is good at getting itself out of a bog! Something the takeuchi struggles with a little.
After getting back to Maldon, the hail returned!
Tomorrow’s workday has been called off on account of predicted rain and lack of preparation due to the digger being off line. But next week is looking like great weather and will be action packed, so please join in the fun if you’re at a loose end.
VGR Civil Blog 