Bridge Inspections

Bridge Inspections was the flavour of today, with 5 and a bit bridges given an extremely detailed going over.

There isn’t lots of exciting action shots, as most of the day is tapping, drilling or checking the components against the standard, which while critically important doesn’t result in any great number of activity shots.

Things like this slightly lifted ballast beam (kerb) on Walmer Road Bridge are all noted down for action within an appropriate time frame. This is a very simple fix – tighten some bolts – others a little more complex.

We’ve got a few, almost all in the 90 to 100 year age bracket, beams that have now seen their last inspection – in all instances the previous strategic placement and stagger of newer beams next to old ones has mean we’ve got no imminent failures present and these can be replaced in a timely manner.

The iron bridge in Castlemaine had a detailed examination – we will be coming back here in due course to do a more detailed assessment while we fix a few issues – nothing major, more preventative. Some old issues, such as the cracked brickwork, is older than the VGR running trains into Castlemaine, this is checked against previous inspection pics, but there no signs of worsening here.

An interesting aside point here, the brick work is keyed in such a way that this crack has stopped after only a few courses – the thought that went into the design to build that 140 years ago has well and truly paid off.

This beam has two sets of dates, 4th month of 1934 and the 6th month of 2002. The older indicates the original installation, the younger is when it was installed here.

91 years old and still going strong, this one didn’t even ping the watch level (normally a 3 year precursor to it being placed onto the to be replaced list – the first indications of decay). This beam will very likely see its 100th birthday still in use – as have many other pieces of timber in these bridges.

We’ve got the big bridges to go now, Winters Flat and Muckleford Creek, we’re pretty confident of knocking over Winters Flat tomorrow, then Muckleford Creek on Thursday, all going well. We won’t need a gang tomorrow, but a gang on Thursday would be a handy thing, as while we’re at Muckleford Creek, we can tidy up a bit of stuff still outstanding from last year’s works there. Thursday crew will meet at Maldon at 8am, the on site from 8.30am.