Sorting sleepers is a job best described as dull, if not extremely dull.
While the little digger is off on sick leave, the telehandler has been called in to deputise. It actually worked extremely well. However, it does require some relatively level ground, which we certainly don’t have everywhere.
The sorting component is required with these fastclip sleepers as they need to be preloaded prior to use. Throughout their many moves before arriving here, some have lost some bits or have damage, its best we’ve found to remove these issues at stock piles rather than spread out sleepers that aren’t easily used beside the track.
The tele was good for getting them off the stack, checking over for any needed fixing or rejecting, then making it easy for the digger to grab them up and run them out to their new home or stack aside for dealing with later on.
Today’s efforts, although only really a few hours, did get us enough prepared and dropped out to reach the culvert near Pipeline Crossing, a good few hundred metres. Only around 1200m to go to get to Donkey Farm Trk! We’ll be busy for a while yet.
Today’s work took place around a Driver Experience Train, whose participants happily obliged to allow it to double as a works train, bringing a wagon load of sleepers out from Muckleford. These were unloaded a little further around the curve, for distribution as required in the coming weeks.
We would highly recommend the Driver Experience Packages, all the participants seem to have a fantastic day and its great to be able to give people the chance to check out our hard a little more first hand. Check out the VGR website for all the Details – https://www.vgr.com.au/drive-a-train
Thursday crew will be down at Muckleford Creek Bridge, starting at Maldon at 8am then all being well down at the Bridge around 8.30am.
VGR Civil Blog 