Castlemaine Yard

On what was essentially meant to be a day of ballasting and Tamping the re-laid section of track outside the loco shed at Castlemaine, we managed to achieve what can only be described as a lot more than that.

We called in the tipper to help distribute the rock, it’s much more efficient than running ballast around by the bucket load, such as we’ve done previously.

We still had a whole range of holes, for various reasons dotted around the loco shed site, so we completed the works required to allow them to be filled.

Which then allowed for the whole area to be tidied up.

Which in turn then allowed us to make use of filled we’d stockpiled for the purpose of making a proper roadway across the track in front of the shed, the trust tipper came in very useful for this task.

We’ve laid geofabric down to give some barrier between the ballast and dirt, however in this setting, what we’ve done, once settled, will probably need a top dressing of good gravel to help it solidify and bind up.

We had Langy on hand with the bobcat to spread the fill, making for a much smoother job than we would ever have achieved with the digger.

Unfortunately we didn’t get a great shot of the finished product, but we’ll try get one tomorrow to show the full extent.

The other major task completed was dropping some rock into a section of erosion behind the loco shed, it was a bit of a two part exercise, requiring our digger to flick it over the fence, while Langy’s little digger went down into the creek bed to firm up the wall.

It’s a bit hard to see through the fence, but it should resist the floods a little better now.

In addition to all of that, quite a bit of tidying up was achieved around the front of the loco shed, especially the ballast profile, a section of poplar regrowth around near Rowe St was given a weedspray, at least to stunt its growth.

On the whole it was a very successful day!

Tomorrow will be a bit of a funny day, the big digger needs to make its way back to Maldon and lots of little awkward digger jobs need tending to, with the added bonus of forecast storm and rain! As such, if you’d really like a day out in the rain, by all means, please feel free to join, however you’ll be very understandably forgiven if you’d rather have the day off. Meeting Maldon at 8am or Castlemaine Depot from 8.30am.