Well today was promised to be an action filled fun experience, it didn’t dissapoint!

The day was almost exclusively devoted to picking up all the steel work and relocating for collection by truck.

We had a very impressive turnout today, with 12 of us on hand for morning tea!

With an even nicer spot found for lunch.

Thankfully having so many allowed for a couple to assist in servicing the little digger and marking up the next rails to be cut. It also meant the crew picking up the jewellery got a small rest between filling the bucket.

As per the rest of the project we’ve separated out the 80lb anchors, but 94lb anchors, plates and spikes have all been piled together for separation at a later date. Here John does the honours of chucking in the last anchors for the day.

Thankfully the big digger and it’s very strong grabs are able to manage the little diggers loaded bucket with ease, while it was out of action being serviced.

This is one of many piles produced today, they seem too small for the enormous amount of work that goes into picking up all the jewellery, but hopefully we can hire a magnet so we don’t need to manually handle these again.

Tomorrow is looking hot, too hot for any significant works, so we’re suggesting to take a day off. We’ll be out towing rail with the diggers, but even that might be given away by lunch time if the heat gets too much (rubber tyres on hot steel rails aren’t the best mix).

Next week will be rail cutting and stacking from Tuesday to Friday, so lots of activity for anyone interested.

A real milestone was reached today with the final rail towed over Moscript St.

This morning saw the final 6 pairs of rail sledded and towed across the roadway.

By 9.30 we had only one to go.

And then gone it was. The significance of today being that we now have all the rail over all the roadways! No more traffic management required as we no longer need to foul the roads. It also means the most time consuming portion of the work is now behind us.

The afternoon saw us tidy up the jewellery ready for pick up tomorrow and begin to lift sleepers from the roadbed.

We’ve also managed to drag all the rails as far north as possibly, as well as making a start on fishing out the shorter rails that don’t require trimming and getting them up on our track ready for loading.

Tomorrow will be a fun filled action packed treat, as we collect all the remaining loose jewellery and place in stockpiles ready for transport off site. Meeting at Moscript St. from 8.15am.

Another landmark day today, with Stephen St. crossing now behind us. All the loose rail was over by morning tea and by lunch the remaining track had been sledded and towed over also.

We even found a spare hour and a half to get 20 odd rails over Moscript St. We’re hopefully that by the end of tomorrow we’ll have everything over Moscript Street as well as having it sledded, but in reality it’ll probably take us until morning tea on Wednesday.

Either way though we’re making real progress and the end is certainly in sight. Meeting at Moscript St from 8.15am tomorrow.

Another two rail trains were loaded today, one was discharged, the other transferred to Muckleford for discharging in the coming weeks.

This pic shows the train parked up where the rail drop ran out yesterday, well on the Down Side of Rifle Range Bridge.

Today’s load took the Down leg to approx 500m short of Boundary Track, while the up leg is not quite out of Curve 8. We’re dropping the rails out in such a way as to best utilise the least worn running edge (generally the opposite of how it was in the Maryborough line).

The gang made use of the discharge time to mark up the next rails to be cut and loaded, overall an extremely successful week.

Next week we’ve organised to get the traffic controllers back in to get everything south of Moscript St. over and that’ll see the end of our road crossings!

Monday we’ll be at Stephen St from 8am, Tuesday at Moscript St and Wednesday we’ll be sledding from Stephen to Moscript and towing over Moscript. There should be lots to do on Tuesday and Wednesday so please feel free to join us.