Monday and yesterday saw a very intense few days of sleeper preparation, in the pic above there was a very very large pile of concrete sleepers, however they’re all now distributed lineside, ready for installation.

We’ve even continued the sleeper marking all the way to the end of the long curve, from where Donkey Farm Track can be just seen in the distance!

Today’s crew is out there continuing on with a bit more of this preparation.

Given the Easter long weekend and a good number of our gang are heading away, we won’t have a workday tomorrow or any day next week – we’ll have a little break and be ready to hit the ground running on Monday 26th April, 8am at Maldon.

The weekend just gone saw some very exciting activities, as DRA (Disaster Recovery Australia) held the second of their very successful weekend work programs at the VGR.

They had two teams of six volunteers being trained in basic tree felling, and chainsaw crosscutting and clearing, working in the Muckleford  to Sawmill rd section. The focus is on removing trees that are dead, dangerous, too close to the rails, and those impacting safety sightlines.
Next DRA weekend work party will be on 17/18 May which will be a larger operational exercise.

Thankyou to DRA for helping us out while building their essential skills for disaster recovery!

Another successful day, yesterday’s small crew managed to get a big head start on the job, which enabled us to get another 124 sleepers installed today.

Lots of pics follow, all pretty usual stuff so not too much commentary.

We’re just about around to the next stockpile, which means we’re about 1/4 of the way towards Donkey Farm Trk.

We did so well sleeper inserting, we had the afternoon free to tidy up – we’ve now used up all the sleepers we’ve distributed beside the track, so unfortunately before we can do any more, we need to drop out many more.

We’ve got quite a system in place now, being a bit further from Maldon, running e everything back with a digger is a bit impractical, so the trusty truck is getting some use.

One of our long running faults has been the headwalls on this little box culvert. Until we replaced the sleepers, there was little point replacing them.

Another couple of droppers and these should last the life of this culvert now hopefully – the culvert is really a little undersized but it’s only a very small issue on rare occasions so next time the timber needs renewal, we’ll build a slightly bigger one.

It’s been a busy week, a total of 232 sleepers installed, given our slightly different arrangements this year and only having a 4 day work week, rather than 5, we’re extremely happy with the progress.

Monday’s crew will be on the exciting job of preparing and dropping out sleepers, meeting at Maldon 8am or on site from 8.30am.

We had a very successful day today, inserting and clipping up 107 additional concrete sleepers in Curve 16. This take us to just outside the cutting – which we’re extremely happy about, this isn’t by any stretch the worst cutting, however they are always extremely awkward places to work in.

As yet, it hasn’t received its final tweaking, however its looking amazingly good already. Another 50 or so have been prepared ready to be tackled this week, with tomorrow’s crew set to start that out on site from 8.30am (meeting Maldon 8am).

We had quite an exciting day today, with the arrival of a Ballast Regulator, all the way from our friends at Steamramger in South Australia.

This move has been sitting in the wings for about 3 years, waiting for the stars to align at either end to keep the transport and crane costs to a minimum!

The lift was extremely straight forward and before we knew it, it was down on VGR metals.

It’s not gone for many many years apparently, however after a good check over of all the fluids, the fitting of a battery and the turn of the key, it started like it was last used yesterday! 

Because it started, we’ve moved it into the headshunt to keep it safe and sound for now, we had intended running it off the turntable, however the clearance against the platform is too tight without turning it first so we’ll worry about all that down the track, for now it’s out of the way.

We didn’t try every single bell and whistle on it, however it would appear that everything does work and it even came with spare wheels as these are very close to the end of their service life.

Before we can place this into service we’ll need to go over it with a fine tooth comb, give it a full service, work on setting up our accreditation system to ensure we can safely manage this new device and get some formal instruction and training on its use so we can train up our people going forward.

Given how good the overall condition is, it would be great to give it a coat of paint to tidy it up.

Given we’ve got very little ballast it’s not going to be an everyday item, however the ballast broom will be extremely useful in tidying up the track and when the day comes that we do get ballast, it’ll be a massive bonus!

Tomorrow’s crew will be back onto resleepering, meeting at Maldon 8am or on site from 8.30am.