Odd Stuff

This morning involved an excursion to Daylesford and back to collect/drop off a few items.

However upon returning to Maldon, the lack of formal workday was made use of to build this truly hideous looking thing.

It’s a ballast scrapper, set to the exact height of a full depth concrete sleeper. The idea being well lift the rail 150mm, remove the old sleepers and use this to sit on the rail head and allow a level ballast/gravel base to be made for the concrete sleepers going in. The extra large cut outs are to clear fishplates.

It is most certainly the most ugly, probably the most flimsy and unbeautiful one of its kind, however for a mark 1 trial, it’ll do the job. We haven’t got an area quite ready to test it properly, however it certainly seemed to do its intended purpose when poked between a couple of timber sleepers in the river gravel section, time will tell, hopefully the week after next we might get to have a little try of this.

Next week should be back to situation normal, with Tuesday’s workday, fingers crossed, back to tamping near Brown Street and dip removal up by Boundary Trk. The plan will be to meet at Boundary Track at 8.30am.