They promised rain and this time they delivered. The following is a collection of shots from a patrol this afternoon and the water was still rising, especially around Castlemaine.

As most of the area (Maldon is basically cut off now) is now inaccessible by road, there won’t be a workday tomorrow as although we may have nice sun, we may find we just can’t get anywhere near a worksite.

It’s appears we’ve escaped any serious damage thankfully on the railway, but we’ll confirm that once the rain has stopped tomorrow. By all accounts the bridges have very fast but very free flowing water under them and absolutely no signs of movement.

Our thoughts are with the people who’s houses have flooded, especially around Castlemaine station, hopefully any damage is minimal.

Stay safe if you do need to be on the roads tomorrow and please remember to never enter flood waters.

A productive day today, in excellent weather, with several kms worth of sleeper plates inserted and largely tamped.

We’re probably down to the last km or so of this now.

While one team was off inserting plates, a small crew followed up drilling holes, with just under a km of that accomplished.

Ideally we’d be continuing with this on Thursday, however, the prediction is for severe rains (and these seem a little more likely than last Thursday’s predictions). So there won’t be workday planned for Thursday, however all going well, we will be working on Friday, but check back here Thursday night for details.

Well the weather has been very crafty, following today’s prediction of only light rain, it absolutely bucketed down! And promptly got the plate dropper outters very wet.

However once wet, the gang made the decision they probably weren’t going to get any more wet by just staying in the rain, so 4 pallets worth of plates were dropped out, leaving only a few hundred metres to go and all the plates will be out.

However… as soon as the plates were out and the gear packed away, the rain turned off and the sun came out, always the way.

Tuesday’s gang will be meeting at Maldon at 8am or near Sawmill Rd Bridge from 8.30am, inserting the plates.

Well after a slightly disappointing day of very little rain today, we will be working as usual tomorrow. Meeting near Sawmill Road Bridge from 8.15am.