Today saw us tackle the UP leg of 1 road at Muckleford.

The rails have been swapped and largely clipped up, with much more to do tomorrow.

We even had another driver experience pass us by.

Tomorrow’s crew will meet at Maldon at 8am, or at Muckleford from 8.30am.

A few photos from Thursday’s effort are below…

The new rails were dragged up and a replacement check rail was found for the Dock road turnout.

All in readiness for Monday.

A driver experience train crossed our path on Thursday, making a very welcome break in works.

Using 2 road one way due to our works but right to head home through the platform as we’d finished off by the time of the return.

Sorry for the lack of recent blog posts, it certainly hasn’t been due to inactivity.

Last week saw us undertake some quite different odd jobs, including the removal of several geometry issues at Maldon.

It was over a long section, so the trusty laser was used to make it much quicker, which it worked very well for.

We recovered 3 stay concrete sleepers that slid down embankments during resleepering several years ago… can’t rush these things, can you.

A large number of sapling regrowth around the level crossings at Muckleford were removed and poisoned – greatly improving visibility around those.

However, it was all leading up the rerailing of 1 road Muckleford. For years we’ve been inspecting the rail along here- all reclaimed 80lb rail of less than good quality, saying wouldn’t it be nice to replace this with some better rail. We’ll that’s what we did this week.

Monday’s crew pulled spikes and clips before the rail was swiftly swapped.

We’ve replaced the old various length rail with 41m 80lb rail, meaning along the whole platform there are now only 3 joints rather than the 15 or so there previously.

Monday’s crew also found the energy to break up most of the old rail, before being rained out in the afternoon.

Tuesday’s crew ran along and did the clipping up first, followed by a bit of lining work to remove the odd twists and kinks that the old rail insisted on conforming to.

Sleeper plates were installed, holes drilled and dog spikes driven. Resulting in the Down leg being all but complete!

There are one or two minor jobs to do tomorrow, but essentially it’s all done. However it’s now time to prepare to rerail the UP leg, we’ll move the rock, prepare the new rail and generally gear ourselves up to start rerailing the up side tomorrow, with the aim to make that next week’s project.

Tomorrow’s crew will meet at Maldon 8am or at Muckleford from 8.30am

It’s that time of year once again, where the detailed track inspection needs to be undertaken.

This week has seen the running lines in all three yards closely inspected as well as several minor repairs undertaken.

General lubricating maintenance and checking has occurred at Maldon and Muckleford with seasonal adjustments undertaken as required.

Maldon Yard had 10 loose 60lb bolts, all of which we’ve replaced with high tensile options, hopefully reducing the ongoing maintenance there.

The most severe items of concern found between Maldon and Donkey Farm Track were around 10 loose fish bolts – all of the older style and almost all of those we’ve replaced. This section, being now 100% concrete, is holding its line and top extremely well given the lack of available ballast, which is very pleasing and bodes very well for holding in excellent space once ballast and tamping can occur.

Next week will most likely be more of the same, weather and man power depending.

Monday and Tuesday’s crew will meet at Maldon at 8am – be prepared for a bit of walking.

After what continued to be an intense week for V/Line and their contractors, the section of track over the Midland Hwy Arch bridge was reinstated and finished off.

Wednesday saw the track rebuilt, and due to a few design changes our track was lifted to give a greater ballast depth over the arch of the bridge – this didn’t really impact us, it was more about the longevity of the water proofing on the bridge structure below.

However, the raise was significant enough to need the approaches lifting, meaning a tamper and regulator paid us a visit.

Several passes were made from Rowe Street through to the North end of Forest Creek Bridge. With some locations coming up just over 200mm, meaning a lot of ballast was added.

In anticipation of this, V/line also replaced 40 of our remaining timber sleepers with concrete. These were mainly in the section between the bridges and a few back towards Rowe St.

A few videos follow of the tamper and reg in action.

As always, it’s very impressive to watch the ability of the machines and the operators, and the end result was very impressive.

The end result of all this tamping was pretty impressive.

The following day the once the welding, bolting, and clean up were fully completed, it looked a million dollars.

At the end of this project, with the combined effort from us and V/Line 152 sleepers in this section were replaced, leaving only 28 timber sleepers between Rowe St and the Arch Bridge – all outside of the ‘fouling’ area so we can change these at our leisure. There are about 8 timber sleepers remaining over Forest Creek Bridge. However, they’ll last at least another 10 years.

It’s a pretty landmark moment for the VGR, beside tamping, foliage, bolt tightening, etc… the maintenance here has dropped right off, and the track is now extremely solid – an insight into what we’re heading towards all the way through to Maldon.

In completely unrelated matters, the concrete floor in the loco shed at Castlemaine is now ready to use (in fact, we did some digger maintenance there earlier in the week, and it was Marvellous). Fill has been placed around the edges to make it safe to walk and use. 

As time, resources, money etc… permit, we’ll continue with this work, hopefully by the end of this year the second pit will be ready to go and at least some of the annex will be concreted.

Next week’s workday on Monday is cancelled (public holiday) and Tuesday will be about getting the last of the equipment through to Maldon – as such, no real workday will occur. Check back closer for Wednesday/Thursday info.