Concretes

Another big day today, with the final 75 sleepers installed (following on from yesterday’s 75).

Lots of clipping up as we went.

The gang is very much back into the stride of this task now, pretty much keeping pace with the digger doing the insertions.

We spent a considerable amount of time jacking and packing the dips. It was pretty lumpy through here before we did the work, so this has resulted in a very significant improvement.

For the 2025 Year To date – we’ve installed 1,009 Concrete Sleepers, 851 of those have been in this recent effort from Pipeline Crossing – the others around Castlemaine.

There’s approximately 2000 concrete sleepers required to complete the section Pipeline Xing to Donkey Farm Trk Xing – so by the end of next week, we’re pretty confident we’ll have reached the halfway mark.

Our overall concrete sleeper count Castlemaine to Maldon is now 13,070 – assuming our running line has 23,000 sleepers (we haven’t actually counted every one of them…. but it’s a good estimate) we’re now well over having half of our entire sleepers being concrete.

We’ve updated the Progress Map to show the progress to today (1st May 2025) with the link here:

The afternoon was spent on completely different tasks, including fixing up a few issues on the platform at Muckleford.

A series of minor holes had developed behind the now quite old coping timbers – they’re due for replacement later this year, however to tide us over some strategic placement of rocks and roadbase, followed by a good scrape has seen it improved. The gang even found the energy to remove the larger weeds from the platform at the down end.

While in Rome…. it’s always important when an opportunity arises to fully test the apparatus, the chance was also taken to slacken off the signal wires slightly now that the cold weather is approaching – it’s quite surprising how much the signal wire is effected by temperature and a seasonal check is always advisable.

The final task for the day was far from glorious, but no less important. The removal of a dead kangaroo from the track. It’s not at all common to come across kangaroos on the track, however this particular roo wasn’t too wise to a train at some point recently – the use of an excavator at a good reach with all the windows closed is a very good thing in this situation.

Next week’s gang will continue with the resleepering effort, meeting Monday morning 8am at Maldon or on site from 8.30am.