Track Inspection

Today was the start of the detailed track inspection, a six monthly ritual, and quite well practised now.

We began by checking the settings of the rolling track gauge against our master reference and then headed off!

It was a glorious morning, with a few minor tight gauge faults found just outside Maldon Yard, however the magnitude of which was sufficiently small to be permitted in the track for 1 month, and given we plan on beginning resleepeeing there next week… we can rest pretty easy with that one.

We had a few bolts to tighten, but only one needed replacing, in fact we must have just about replaced all the old type bolts in the track now, hence why we had so few that needed our attention at this inspection.

We seemed to set a bit of a record today, the rolling gauge is quite quick, however normally that crew identify a large number of small faults for the follow up crew to fix, however the number of faults was so much lower than previous times it resulted in the follow up crew keeping up with the checkers.

The detailed notes that are taken for each section of the track are done along with the follow up crew, so as to record all faults and the action taken. This does involve a lot of sitting down to take notes, so as to ensure they’re all legible back in the office.

We had a ripper morning tea spot, down on Donkey Farm Track, it’s still a very quiet bush road and a very nice quiet place for a cuppa.

We managed to get the whole mainline, except Castlemaine Yard, walked and checked with the rolling gauge today, about 4kms better than we usually do, which was excellent. 

We’ve got a few faults to fix, nothing of great interest or excitement, but it did reaffirm how quickly the timber sleepers are failing, but that’s not a surprise and if we can keep up our great rates of progress 99% of our major concerns will enter the history books, within the next few years.

We will focus heavily on Castlemaine Yard tomorrow as it will be the first Yard that we know needs work, so we’ll mark it up ready for that work while we’re there. Hopefully we’ll also get out to Muckleford to do a full turnout and siding check there, Maldon Yard may be a little ambitious for tomorrow but we’ll see.

Tomorrow’s gang meeting at Castlemaine Depot at 8.30am