A quite note before we begin, our buy a sleeper campaign is going very well, since 1st April 2024 we’ve raised an impressive $66,210 towards our target of $250,000.
Thank you to everyone who has donated. If you can help us out in any way, please consider making a donation to our buy a sleeper campaign – https://www.vgr.com.au/product/buy-a-sleeper/406
It’s been hot!! Really hot. However, for some reason, we haven’t quite managed to convince ourselves not to keep going out in it! (But we do finish early)
Friday saw us fit up the spreader bars and point lever onto the new turnout in Maldon Yard. But not before we’d been out and replaced another 50 odd fishplates!
When we collected these turnouts, many years ago, from around Melbourne, they were all standard gauge. The fundamental differences are very minor, however everything is 6.5″ closer together than what we need. Including the spreader bars.
Needless to say we’ve now well and truly used up our supply of broad gauge spreaders so it’s onto modifying the standard gauge ones, they’re actually a good design, with interchangeable parts for different gauges, however we’ve used up those bits too! So, given that we’re now deep into siding territory, we’ve welded in a 6.5″ section in, to achieve the required result. We’d be reluctant to do this on a mainline, however in a siding, this is still miles ahead of what we were using previously.
The end result looked very much like it did previously, however fully functional.
We called up our local earthmover to assist us in getting some gravel, which although was by no means urgent, arrived only a few hours later!
However by Friday afternoon, we were knackered and left the pile for this week.
Before the heat really picked up this morning, we spread the gravel to form a really very nice place for us to cross the track, it’s surprising how often we use this little crossover, and climbing over rails was becoming a nuisance.
With a very light compact from the whacker, this gravel (Muckleford Crush, if anyone needs some good gravel) sets amazingly, giving an ideal walking surface between our depot and the engine shed.
The rest of today was a little less exciting… we made good headway in getting 3 road connected back up, however one thing lead to another, and what was a weep on the little digger became a bit more severe…
The small cylinder in the quick hitch failed, the gland has simply had enough and fallen apart, so it’s now off being repaired, it’ll be at least a week but likely longer. Unfortunately, as mentioned previously, this machine is now in very poor health, mainly due to the extreme amount of work it’s done – we are extremely proud that we’ve managed to wear it out and it’s done extremely well given the work it’s completed, however it’s certainly due for replacement.
Hopefully now the first panel of 3 road is back roughly in place, the new alignment etc… can be seen, there is very little different to before however we susoect the fence will be too close.
We’re hoping to replace as much as we can with steel sleepers here, as we’re certainly not wanting to come back anytime soon.
It’s a tight space and the big digger can only slew a few degrees before fouling on something, so it’ll certainly be slow going until the little digger is back, but we’ll get there, there isn’t a great rush currently for this.
Thursday’s crew will meet at Maldon at 8am, depending on how things go tomorrow, we’ll either be in Maldon Yard again, or out at Muckleford Creek Bridge, either way we’ll be at Maldon for a while first up to load up trucks.
VGR Civil Blog 