Well today was a very big day for the VGR with the official “Turning of the first sod” for the Service Re-orientation Project. Unfortunately we didn’t have available a golden or silver shovel, by the trusty old Cyclone off the truck did the job perfectly!

(For more details of the project please see – http://www.vgr.com.au/Service%20Reorientation%20Project.pdf )

It was officiated very enthusiastically by Hon. Jaclyn Symes Minister for Regional Development and our own local MP Maree Edwards. It is with much thanks to these two, their departments and the excellent crew at Regional Development Victoria that our exciting project is up and running.

The project is actually made up of two smaller projects, the details are in the link above but essentially it is broken up into Castlemaine Redevelopment and Track Upgrade. Both critical things to our long term aims, objectives and most importantly a sustainable future.

There was quite the crowd there for the ceremony and we even treated the party to a trip to Maldon to show them just what their support has enabled for our track gang – the feeling we got back was that it has been money well spent!

Not ones to miss an opportunity, we even showed off our rather stunning looking civil train, we’ve very proud of it. Freshly loaded with concrete sleepers looking very important and progressive.

But we weren’t content with just showing off our wagons and sleepers, we also proceeded to drop them out along tangent 8-9 ready for insertion in the following weeks. Today’s drop out of 208 sleepers, along with the 226 dropped out on this straight a few weeks ago takes us to about half way along this very long straight. – It’ll keep us busy for a while getting all these in.

The day started with heads down, bums up. Collecting all the jewellery left over from last weeks re-railing.

Another last – hopefully! Although we’ll be doing this once we get to the other section it will be different, hopefully with less double handling. However we’ve stacked all the jewellery from this into drums, onto pallets or into containers ready for storage, re-use or disposal. It really tidies up the site.

We also took the opportunity to break up the last of the 60lb rail from this straight, but not before dragging it up to a much easier location. All the plates and bolts have also been sorted. Our lifting and tamping works from last Friday have received great praise from our train crews – it’s good to know our works gets noticed.

We even took the opportunity to stack all the surplus materials neatly and orderly, ready for loading onto a train at some stage for transport to more appropriate homes.

The afternoon was spent correcting some bad track geometry at the down end of Muckleford Creek Bridge, under the expert eyes of Victorian Railways trained Mick and Rolf. We lifted some significant dips just off the bridge, as well as completely re-lining the approach curve and first few lengths of rail onto the bridge. The end result is very impressive! (Only the rest of the track to go now).

Tomorrow will be attending to some materials in Castlemaine Yard that require shifting for the upcoming works – exciting times! Meeting Maldon 7.30am or Castlemaine from 8.30am.

On a sadder note, many readers may have known track gang regular (not so much recently, but for many years) Rob Fletcher. Rob unfortunately passed away suddenly today – for further details please visit the Members Area of the VGR Website.

It was full steam ahead with drilling and spiking this morning. With the 1 in 3 completed by morning tea.

We used a combination of drills today, just to mix it up a bit.

Just after morning tea, we began a tamping pass to lift the undrilled sleepers. This was followed very closely by the drilling and spiking crew, so closely we were all done by lunch time.

Now it wouldn’t be a ceremonious occasion in track work if there wasn’t a Golden Dogspike and a Speech.

John didn’t dissapointed with either.

It’s almost 5 years to the day since the re-railing program began, it’s been a long and sometimes slow road. however with 5 years of practice behind us, it’s fair to say we’ve got pretty good, managing to aquire greatly improved equipment, tools and techniques, as well as being able to train up our volunteers to become very very proficient track maintainers.

With a few swift blows after a very appropriate speech, thanking our hard working volunteers, John had driven home our golden spike!

(We do have a video of this that we’ll post up soon when we do a peice on the whole re-railing project)

(if anyone’s thinking they might like to souvenir this gold spike, they will be quite dissapointed to find it is in fact a very well painted regular dog spike)

Nev, looking very proud to be part of the momentous day.

Once the important spiking works were complete, we tended to some significant dips in the track. The main dip funnily enough was at the very crest of the hill!

But some jacking and tamping has brought it back to a lovely vertical curve.

We also had several smaller twists and unlevel sections that were not pretty, but these are now gone and this bit of track looks very smart indeed.

The completed job, with everyone either looking very happy or waiving their arms in celebration.

Today marks a very significant day on our railway. Not only has it shown that we are determined to ensure our railway keeps operating, it has shown that we have the ability to go one step further….

We have helped ensure that our railway will be around for the next 100 Years.

We’ve taken our old branchline standard of railway, with trains maybe twice a week, to a railway that can handle our ever growing traffic, while reducing our ongoing maintenance requirements.

We’re making our permenant way sustainable, safer, stronger, smoother and future proof, it now brings us in line with current Australian industry standards, allowing the greatly increased use of mechanised maintenance and off the shelf replacements, spares, fittings etc…

But it’s really down to the ongoing support of our volunteers, benefactors and dedicated supporters who have allowed this to happen. We couldn’t have done any of this without you and as such we want to thank you formally, with a special train later this year, for all to enjoy and to see for yourself the result of all this hard work. (details released soon).

As a bit of a rounding off to the great day, we kicked another small milestone…

We were able to remove the temporary speed restriction that we’ve had over this straight. With the exception of Bendigo Road Crossing (for safety reasons), this whole section is now line speed – 25mph (40kph), the first time ever in VGR history.

Well it was a massive effort but we’ve now replaced all the 60lb between Maldon and Muckleford!

Today was probably the most different we’ve had when it comes to re-railing, as we had to keep letting passenger trains through.

As such we set about installing 8 x 80lB rails before 11am, with that completed just in time to allow the first train through without having to hold them up.

Between 11 and 1.45 (the next train) we managed the same again. As such we’ve installed and spiked 1 in 3 16 x 80lb rails todays.

But that wasn’t all.

After the last train was through we quickly pulled out the final 18 lengths of 60lb. As well as moving into position the final 9 lengths of 80lb. An amazing effort considering our smaller gang size and train impositions.

We’ve just cut in the final length of 80lb for this section, with Clive and John prepareing to drill holes for the last joint.

Plates on, bolts in with just tightening to go for all the rails to be in!

It was quite a ceremonious occasion, so having 4 bolts meant we had to have 4 different dooer-uppers. Bruce did the honors first.

Followed by John

Then onto Rolf

With Mal now able to claim he was the last to do up a bolt during the re-rail of this section! A sensational team effort.

A view back up the hill of the day’s hard work.

And a view down the hill, it’s a little hard to tell, but the difference is actually quite noticeable.

We even got Mick out with his fancy thermometer to check out our rail temperatures (about 36-38 degrees C if you were wondering, air temp was around 26). This was more a curiosity than anything.

The re-railing has been massive task for the Railway, taking enormous resources, planning and manpower. But just ask anyone who takes a ride to find out just how amazingly better our railway is for it. And it’s all down to our equally amazing volunteers, who give up their time to keep our railway not only running, but hlpung to make these significant improvements, we can’t thank you enough.

It’s not quite time to hang up the tools in celebration, as we still need to complete all the spiking and install anchors by close of play tomorrow.

Why not join us to help celebrate this enormous milestone in the history of the VGR. Many hands make light work and this will be the last opportunity to experience the re-railing in this style as the other section will be much different with it’s concrete sleepers. Meeting Maldon 8am or site from 8.15am, we’d love to have you there.