It’s beginning to look a lot like the real issue is in the reduction box, where the planetary gears look a little different to usual… at least these parts will hopefully be available, those investigations will begin first up on Monday.
It’s certainly done a nice job of it! The reason for the failure isn’t clear, however the machine is now 20 years old and has done a power of work… probably the main causes. The fact that we could still turn the slew enough to be able to get it straight for disassembly is a bit of a miracle!
While the workshop boys pulled apart the slew motor to give us the bad news, we tackled more of the turnout maintenance, working thoroughly through Muckleford and Castlemaine Yards.
Including tasks such as removing washed in debris from around the signal wire.
We’ve gone thoroughly over every turnout across the railway this week, with everything now running quite nicely.
Stay turned for details of workdays next week, we’ll likely begin pulling apart the little digger also, as we’re going to be sidelined a while with the big one out, we’ll work under the guidance of the workshop staff and begin the fun job of getting to the stuck valve, hopefully by the end of August we’ll be back in action with both machines, however we’ll not be too optimistic.
We’ll also use this down time to prepare thoroughly for the upcoming works, this will include such exciting tasks as stacking many more sleeper plates, but we’ll try break that up a little.
VGR Civil Blog 