Sleeper Distribution

An action-packed day of collecting sleeper from the stockpiles and dropping out as needed beside the track.

We did, however, get to test a rather uninspiring, but actually amazingly effective ballast brush, developed earlier this week in the hope of reducing the backbreaking labour of removing rock from around the dogspikes.

Mark 2 will use something a bit better than a steel rope found lying in the grass, however consider we’ve cobbled it together for less than $20, we’re staggered at the result, it requires about 4 passes over the rail to get a good result, especially in the heavy rock, it managed 4 passes over each rail from Pipeline Crossing to the start of the long straight near Bendigo Road, which has probably saved us nearly 1 full weeks worth of work flicking rock away manually – definitely worth the hassle.

A follow us with the blower has left things looking very neat and tidy, with the spikes clearly exposed and the foot of the rail clearly visible, important factors for the upcoming resleepeering works.

The great plume of dust John was blowing around here did eventually settle, however, not before coating him thoroughly.

The sleeper dropping out went very smoothly. We didn’t do a count of the exact number we handled today. However, it would be nudging 1000.

The dropped out sleepers really do put the job into a nice visual perspective now, it’s an enormous number of sleepers!

We’ve made the job a little bit smaller today however, by stacking and bundling up all the gluts that had been used to stack the sleepers in the piles, we’ll collect those up at some stage and rehome them.

The main purpose of today’s activity, was to make room to unload a couple of sleeper trains tomorrow, which given the cuttings, embankments and wet ground, are a bit few and far between.

Tomorrow’s crew will meet at Maldon from 8am, our sleeper train should be leaving Maldon shortly after 8.30, all going well.