After the success of Fridays efforts, install a further 25 timber sleepers into 3 road at Castlemaine, we’ll be back at Castlemaine again tomorrow, however we’ll have a very slight change of pace.

The little digger is in having some attention (a new rocker cover gasket and turbo / breather hoses), so we’ll be doing a few different jobs, in preparation of more resleepering later in the week.

Today’s Driver Experience train conveyed a train load of items down to Castlemaine for us, things we’ll likely need to do various tasks around the Yard and it’ll give us a good excuse to load up all the items we won’t be needing there any longer and getting them back to a more suitable home. It was quite nice to see a steam engine handling this task, as though that’s just how we do it!

Tomorrow’s crew will meet at Castlemaine Depot at 8am, first job being to help lift off the little digger engine covers.

As we transferred the required equipment and tools from Maldon through to Castlemaine to undertake re-sleepering works, we did a few odd jobs on the way.

The first being the stacking of timber gluts at Muckleford onto pallets ready for collection by another railway, the other being the remove of a slight dip that had re-formed by Pyrenees Hwy.

It was only relatively minor, however it’s a location we lifted significantly a few months ago, so settlement was likely. Hopefully this will have done the trick.

Then it was into Castlemaine, replacing failed timber sleepers in the platform road, using the best of the sleepers recovered from the recent concrete sleepering. We managed to get 15 inserted and clipped up this afternoon, which was quite good going given the setup, refuelling and other odd tasks we did as well.

There are around 150 sleepers to replace around the Yard here, so this should keep us busy for the next few weeks!

Tomorrow’s crew will meet at Castlemaine Depot from 8.15am, where we’ll bring out the truck and digger and get a few more replaced in 3 Road.

We had a nicely successful day today, with the remaining timber sleepers (from the concrete sleepering) stacked and bundled.

We’ve prepared all the necessary materials for the resleepering works at Castlemaine and loaded them onto trucks and rail wagons as appropriate, ready for transport down there later this week/early next week.

Thursday’s crew will begin at Maldon at 8am, working our way progressively towards Castlemaine undertaking a few odd jobs along the way, if we knock those over suitably early we may make a start on resleepering, otherwise we’ll be ready to get into it on Friday.

We’re back into a fairly regular program of works again from tomorrow. The next few week’s focus will be around replacing sleepers and point timbers in Castlemaine Yard, however before than can occur, we need to get everything sorted up at Maldon so we can head off to Castlemaine for a few weeks. So that’s where we’ll be tomorrow, Maldon Yard, from 8am.