Track Walk

We had a very successful day today, covering the length of the line during the track walk, we’ve still got a bit of Maldon Yard to go, but on the whole it’s done.

The usual calibration and checking of the rolling gauge was done before heading off.

And head off we did. You’ll be happy to know all concrete sleepered track was excellent gauge and we didn’t have any issues on the timber sections this time either, which was great – it’s not accidental as we’ve targeted the likely failure areas with the concrete sleepering.

Hours of fun were had with this task. However, very few issues were found, almost all were so minor they were corrected within minutes of finding them.

The odd bolt needed a tighten, but even these were much less than other years, which was nice.

Unfortunately, as predicted, the timber that remains between Pipeline Crossing and Muckleford is well and truly on its last legs. It’ll hold through until March when 100% replacement is proposed however once the really hot weather hits we will be lowering the speeds to keep it safe for trains to travel over, the worst is thankfully confined to a 500m stretch so it’s relatively easy to manage.

The boys decided to set Will up for failure at afternoon tea today, probably a bit of retaliation for making them walk through to Castlemaine in the heat!

Tomorrow’s crew will meet at Maldon from 8am, we’ve got a few bits to finish around Maldon and a couple of jobs to knock over at Maldon before we jump back into some more sleepers next week.