More of the same today, however lots of pics to show off the hard work.

One of the hard pictures to get on the track gang is the synchronised bend and grab manoeuvre, captured here during the bend phase

We did need to upgrade diggers when picking up the plates, as the little digger just wasn’t up the task.

Some rail needed moving to fix up the joint locations. The joints from here on for several hundred metres shouldn’t require adjustment, meaning we should be able to achieve things a little more efficiently.

It was all systems go today, with the gang doing a great job of keeping up with the digger.

Some jacking and packing saw any major issues corrected, and it’s easily now better than it was previously.

A very big tidy up was had, bundling sleepers and stacking the rubbish timber clear of the drains.

A bit of a scrape to bring in the edges and clear the drains certainly made the job look much more finished.

It’s come up looking a treat and based on the very poor timbers that had we removed in kit form, this wasn’t before time.

Monday, we’ll be having a change of pace. There won’t be a formal workday as there’s several small things to tend to around Maldon Yard. Tuesday will be back to situation normal. Meeting Maldon 8am or on site from 8.30am.

Things are progressing well out on the resleepering works, with the first pass of the intermediate sleepers inserted and clipped up today, instead of having the gang watch the remainder being inserted we diverted to distributing more sleepers to allow works to progress.

Many hours were spent sorting, preparing and dropping out fastclip sleepers, in fact the whole stockpile in this pic has been distributed, allowing another good few hundred sleepers to be installed over the coming weeks.

Tomorrow’s crew will meet at Maldon at 8am or out on site from 8.30am to continue with the preparations and distribution – it’s never a fun job but a necessary evil in the process.

Often requested has been a progress map of our work on the track, it becomes a very complex task as there is many facets to our works and where does one draw the line as to current works and previous efforts. As part of our record keeping process we do plot our works on a map and we’ve attempted to make that a little more available and accessible – it’s a very large PDF which will require zooming in to see, however hopefully it’ll be of some value – it may be best viewed on a computer.

We’ll endeavour to update this monthly while the major works are occurring.

Progress as of March 2025:

Another successful start to the week, with 26 sleepers in and clipped up in the 1 in 4 pattern – it could have been more easily, however for now, that’s all the sleepers we have distributed.

Tomorrow’s crew only has 78 to get under and clip up, then we can get onto distributing the next 1800 sleepers towards Donkey Farm Trk!

Tomorrow’s crew will meet Maldon 8am or on site from 8.30am.

Today was all about finishing off the section of concretes we’ve been working on this week – a total of 144 were installed this week, not a record, but still a solid start given we’re easing back into it.

Lots of jacking and packing to tidy up a few dips – most of which were there well before we installed the concretes – this process is improving our overall geometry quite significantly.

A little bit of preparation work was undertaken for next week, however once we’d knocked over the concrete sleepers, it was onto other things.

We corrected a few notable geometry issues out between Muckleford and Castlemaine, nothing major but much easy to attend to them before they worsen.

The approaches to Rifle Range had settled a little, this was a nice easy fix.

A small amount of settlement had occurred near Walmer Road Crossing, nothing too exciting, but while we had the tamper on, it was an obvious one to tend to.

At the end of another week we’re edging ever closer to Muckleford on our quest to replace the very aged timber sleepers, we’re getting there.

Next week will be a carbon copy of this week, except we’ll be working a little further down the track, hopefully getting well into the curve. Meeting at Maldon at 8am on Monday, on site from 8.30am.