It started out as a fantastic day, however it did get very hot and sticky by lunch time.

The day began by bundling up some loose sleepers lying around the Yard.

We spent some time tidying up some junk we had lying around the paddock, we’ve largely used up and tidied up our various stockpiles now. However, it’s important we remember to go back and tidy up these locations to ensure they can we kept clean mown.

We then had a very unusual job, taking E clips from a cardboard box and placing them into a drum for more easy storage. We’re not quite sure why these clips arrived in a box rather than a drum, however it kept us amused for a while.

We spent the afternoon undertaking maintenance of not just the big machines but the little ones too.

Oil changes for the two power packs, filter cleaning and general check-ups. Both have been equipped with spike pullers so we should be all systems go next week.

Our trusty aluminium trolley (which we acquired many years ago off a rubbish pile and fixed up) needed some TLC. This beast gets used and does cop a bit of abuse, so we’re pretty happy to put the effort in when needed to keep it working.

The little digger received its six monthly deep checkover, oil and filter changes and this time a very thorough wash of the radiator – just the fins on the outside, the coolant was recently flushed, however the dust had done a great job of clogging the fins – and we blew it out only a week ago! It’s always amazing how well dust gets into places. Hopefully we’ll get some rain soon and this will lessen as an issue.

Last job for today was to package the yellow truck up with equipment, ready for the off on Monday morning out to Pipeline Crossing.

There won’t be a workday tomorrow. However, we are working Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from now on (except on public holidays). Monday crew will meet at Maldon at 8am before heading out to Pipeline around 8.30am.

We’re tracking incredibly well with our fundraising. As of today, we’ve raised $70,590 out of our target of $250,000!

An amazing effort and thank you to everyone who has contributed.

As always, donations can be made securely at: https://www.vgr.com.au/donate

All donations over $2 are tax deductible.

In unrelated matters, we had a successful day today sorting out our rather impressive mess at Maldon – from the recent Castlemaine Works. As per Tuesday’s post, the resident photographer wasn’t on hand so therefore we forgot to take any interesting pictures.

Maldon Yard was a hive of activity today, with the carriage crew working hard away on two separate projects, an IA wagon and an M wagon. The steel body wagon is receiving some needle gunning down in the depot while the cattle wagon is being repaint and repairing up at the Goods Shed.

We had another volunteer beavering away on cleaning up the old Castlemaine Level Crossing Gate bollards – another exciting little project we’re hoping to show off soon!

These smaller projects are all in the spirit of lifting Maldon’s appearance, improving the experience for our visitors and volunteers and getting us back to showing off the now extremely unique features of a country branch line and showcasing the history of our railway. 

We did take one other picture… a reference pic for a new fan belt, which has seen much better days! It’s not very exciting, but it’s another thing we contend with on a fairly regular basis. We do undertake very regular maintenance on our equipment, which is one reason we’re able to keep this old gear performing without more issues – however it does all take time and effort and ahead of the big resleepering program, we will be undertaking some further maintenance over the next few days.

Tomorrow’s crew will meet at Maldon at 8am, for an action-packed day of depot activities.

We did a power of work today. However, only managed to remember to take this one very unexciting picture.

Today’s tasks included finishing off the new turntable road we built last week at Castlemaine,we continued to have no end of trouble getting things lined up nicely, however it works excellently one way and given its limited use for short term that’ll be quite adequate.

A weedspray of the yards and depots, plus any odd spots along the track that needed it, was undertaken. It’s reasonably good currently, with only the yards looking untidy.

A stop off at Muckleford was made to correct a few issues with Check Rails – nothing too major, but a few loose bolts were remedied to ensure everything stays within tolerance.

The afternoon was spent tackling signage at Donkey Farm Track, where one Railway Crossing sign was replaced for a much less faded version, while the bolts on the other defeated us so it’s now on the Truck for fixing up at Maldon for reinstatement later in the week.

We won’t have a formal workday tomorrow, as we’ll be spending the day up at Maldon organising our rather enormous chaos after all the recent Castlemaine works – however if anyone is wishing to join us, there will be plenty of odd little tasks to do.

Thursday will be a big preparation day, getting things ready for the big resleepering effort, which, given the poor weather this week, we’ll start on Monday 17th March.

Friday’s are now train running days, so we won’t be holding any formal workdays, anyone previously a Friday gang member would be extremely welcome on Monday or Wednesday as these will be new days that we currently don’t have a lot of volunteers rostered to work.

We’ll be out in force again on Tuesday.

To kick things off we’ll have the Maldon based people meeting at Maldon at 7.45am, to do a bit of car pooling so we can meet at Castlemaine at 8.15am.

The main flow of the day will be getting vehicles through to Maldon ahead of the resleepering campaign – hopefully kicking off on Wednesday!