Well we’re into clean up mode at the moment. All the fastenings between Donkey Gully Rd and Hutchinson’s Ln Bridge have now been stockpiled.

Tomorrow’s gang will be working on the section between Yapeen Rd and Hutchinson’s Ln Bridge, meeting midway between the two from 8.15am.

We ended last week quite successfully, despite a significant deluge of rain, all of the loose rails moved over Donkey Gully Rd earlier in the week were towed down to Fryers Rd.

We did hint a couple of weeks back at the ski jump, the purpose of which is shown above. It simply allows enough clearance below the bottom of the digger for a rail to be projected ahead of the digger out over the crossing. It worked very well, and we think we can probably make a few refinements for the next crossing. Normally the digger would become beached on the rail as soon as the rail sits more than about 50mm above normal rail height – this solved that well.

We did very well today, with everything South of Donkey Gully Road now lifted and towed to the north – it still needs shuffling up to Fryers Road which will keep us busy later in the week.

But the significant part of this milestone is that it marks half way! We’ve lifted around 4.5kms of track (or 9km of rail). It certainly doesn’t mean we’re half way through the job however, as we still need to do a lot of cleaning up back towards Guildford and there is now an enormous amount of towing to get the rail through to Castlemaine, but at least it feels like we’re making progress.

Tomorrow and for the majority of this week we will put our time into cleaning up, with the fastenings to be collected up and stacked by the road crossings, sleepers to be lifted and roadbed roughly levelled. Meeting tomorrow 8.30am at Donkey Gully Road.

Well, it was a long day, but an extremely successful one. We’ve now sledded approx. 2/3 of the length between Goudges Ln and Donkey Gully Rd and dragged all the loose rail up to Donkey Gully Rd ready for transfer on Monday next week.

Early next week should see us with all the rail lifted to Donkey Gully and dragged down to Fryers Rd.

In completely unrelated news, the large crane truck has received a bit of a touch up to it’s paint job. It looks like a new truck! Amazing what a bit of fresh paint can do.

We’re all over the place tomorrow, tending to a few odds and sods required back on our own Railway, so no real workday is planned.

We are starting to make good progress with this project, despite the lack of posts (keep forgetting to take photos!).

Our mighty ski jump works a treat, so we’ll definitely be using that idea again at the other crossings.

We’ve now moved all but 20 loose rails over Donkey Gully Road, out of about 100. The rain has slowed us down considerably, but we’re still chipping away at it.

Tomorrow, we will drag the last 20 rails up to Donkey Gully Rd. Well then get back into sledding, hopefully getting a good way towards Donkey Gully Rd so we can move it all across next week. Meeting Donkey Gully Rd from 8.15am.