Another 24 concrete sleepers were installed and clipped up in Curve 16 today, with the balance to be installed tomorrow and being well, another few before the week is out. Although it hasn’t been a high sleeper week, a lot more fishplate changes have occurred down towards Donkey Farm Trk and that is all critical to getting the job done.

There will be workdays tomorrow and Thursday, both starting at Maldon at 8am or on site from 8.30am.

Sorry, we’ve been a bit absent online this week – we’ve had a few away and others working on some other tasks on the railway, however that doesn’t mean we haven’t been busy.

Because of the extra commitments, we elected to only install 89 sleepers this week, which also involved moving a few rails etc etc..

Up to today, the crews have been busy dropping out more sleepers lineside and managed to 1 in 2 sleepers inserted under and half of those clipped up.

Today saw us clip up and install the rest.

It’s all a pretty regular activity now.

We found time to sort the good from the not so good wood, placing them in piles for later collection.

A considerable amount of jacking and packing was required through here, unfortunately we didn’t get a good before shot to show just how bad it had become – another old bridge or probably just large culvert filled many many moons ago that was settling. But it’s come up very nicely all considered now.

A run-through saw the scrappy wood collected and piled up, otherwise its a job we just never get the time to come back to.

The afternoon was a bit of general vehicle maintenance, with the approx 10 year old batteries in the big digger replaced with new ones – it starts now! The truck needed some more puff in its rear tyres – which is so easy since we set our side of the Maldon depot up with Water and Air.

Next week will be a little different – still focusing heavily on the concrete sleepers, but more in regards to preparing the next few hundred metres to give us a clear run later in May – we’ll probably need an extra truck driver Monday morning if you’re seeing this Mick.

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.

After our short break after Easter, we’re back into resleepering.

This week’s aim is 300 sleepers. Around 130 are in so far – the slow bit, so it should be a comfortable effort to knock it over this week.

Monday’s crew did all the spike pulling and most of the E clip sleeper inserting, with today’s crew getting in the remainder of the E clips and most of the first pass intermediate fastclips.

This gets us a very good way around the curve, another week or two and we’ll be most certainly on the straight towards Donkey Farm Trk.

Tomorrow’s crew, will meet at Maldon at 8am before heading out to site, around 8.30am. Hopefully getting the last of the 1 in 2 inserted and clipped up.