We didn’t have our resident Thursday photograph on hand to catch all the excitement today, however we did remember to take a few. The first shot was about morning tea, by which time the old was out and most of the new was in!
In what seemed like no time, we had rails in, cut to length, bolted in and clipped up!
Post lunch was the ever exciting job of lifting to level, ballasting and tamping.
We’ve given the ballast a very thorough tamp, lots of vibration from the tamper, and hopefully, it’ll stay where it’s meant to. The old ground below was brilliantly compact and hard and evidently very well draining.
It wasn’t long before we were adding gravel and rolling it in, we though the truck would be a good weight, however the digger appears to have a much heavier footprint. It’ll settle a little so we’ve got a bit extra on hand to top it up when it does.
We spent the afternoon focusing on the crossing itself, meaning we still have the approaches to get to the correct height and tamp, which should be relatively straight forward. We’ve got one little kink to pull out too, we had it perfect, but it moved during lifting, thankfully it’s in a easy location.
A massive thankyou to Mount Alexander Shire Council for their assistance with the road closure and gravel, we couldn’t do it without them.
In very unfortunate news, we had some very serious damage done to the yellow truck upon return to Maldon.
We returned to find an individual helping himself to some of our stores of items (using tools he’d bought himself to unbolt items that he believes are rightfully his), and he didn’t take too kindly to being told to return the items and retaliated by damaging our truck.
2 broken mirrors, a smashed windscreen and a broken indicator. Undertaken with a shifter, many threats were also made to our staff, upon our request for him to return the item he stole.
The police are involved, however the individual did leave the site against the direction of police, with the items he intended to take.
He is a most unwelcome visitor to the railway, with previous negative interactions.
If anyone sees this vehicle, registration 1SG 9HW at any location around our railway or others, please contact the police and indicate he has a history of stealing railway items. His first name is believed to be Jack, and he is probably known to a few railway groups.
Unfortunately, his behaviour today was highly inappropriate, and he is certainly not doing the railway preservation movement any favours. The vehicle and individual are pictured below. We also have some great video footage of him smashing the window and throwing punches! But we’ll leave that with the police until charges are laid.
It has soured what should have been a very pleasant and successful day.
Hopefully, tomorrow is less eventful! We’ve still got a bit to do, and we’ll be meeting down at Woodlocks Lane from around 8/8.15am.
VGR Civil Blog 