We had a very successful day today, with the last of the ‘clusters’ – groups of failed sleepers, between Muckleford and Midland Hwy now removed!
In fact it’s actually slightly better than that with this almost removing all clusters of failed sleepers the whole length of the line.
Any remaining clusters are so insignificant due to the high quality of surrounding sleepers that they can safely wait until the next sleeper cycle for correction (especially given how few trains are running). However given the majority of our sleepers are still timber and of a fair age, it’ll only be another 6 months before we have a few more to replace.
Today we installed 19 concrete sleepers today and replaced about 50 failed bolts, meaning this section of the track should hold together comfortably until we can re-rail.
Tomorrow will be a quiet day, tamping up today’s effort and moving machinery around in readiness to return to rail recovery from the Maryborough line in the coming weeks.
VGR Civil Blog 