Well three long days of back filling, our enormous trench is no longer.

With all but the small hole in front of the digger now filled and smoothed, it will of course all sink and require topping up after some rain.

Unfortunately this doesn’t quite mean the end of the trenching works, as there is about half as much still to go in the south direction, but it’ll be much easier with far fewer obstacles in the way. That will still be a few weeks away.

Tomorrow’s gang will be begging the final re-railing in the Maldon – Muckleford section. Please come along and help us celebrate this enormous milestone. Maldon 8am or site from 8.15am.

This coming Saturday’s gang will be working again on the signalling in Castlemaine yard.

It’ll be lubrication of the vital innards of the signal box itself, a sight not often seen, so if you’ve even wondered how the signal box really works, Saturday’s for you.

Meeting at the Signal box from 8.30, access may be limited from Walker street so parking in the station carpark is recommended.

We’re finally up to the un-trenching phase in Castlemaine.

For convenience and just because we could we’ve started at the south end and we’re working north.

It’s a case of installing sand over the services, dirt over that to 300mm below ground level, rolling out the danger tape for the electricity, followed by the final cover of dirt with a few compaction runs of the digger.

Here project manager Graeme is taking a well earned break after the section behind him has just had it’s tape installed, to be filled first thing tomorrow morning, were about 1/3 of the way there after today’s efforts.

We should have it all backfilled by end of play tomorrow, with final tidy up to occur on Wednesday.

The wiggly track over Muckleford Creek was tackled today. It’s a two part process. To start with the track is lifted a reasonable height (about 30mm) to remove all dips and to loosen it up for sliding/aligning.

The second part is to align the track, we didn’t get time to do that part today, but we did get the whole bridge lifted and what a difference it made.

Part of lifting is to ensure the deck below isn’t losing ballast, which in places it was. This was remedied in two of the worse locations, but it’s a very labour and time intensive job so we’ve still got more to do.

The gang even took the opportunity to realign a few skewed sleepers and replace a failing set of fish plates.

Here John’s re-drilling a sleeper which was moved away while the hole in the decking below was plated. We use any old sleeper plates which have no use to us in the track.

To ferry the plates and reduce handling, the yellow truck brought them close enough to the bridge to allow passing up, with Clive and Rolf having a breather between plate handling, while Mick digs out the next hole.

The whole bridge was jacked to a very nice uniform height before a tamping pass.

The amount of lifting was very evident after the tamp, with the bridge now needing more ballast. However that won’t go on until after the holes are plated and track is straightened.

It’s a bit hard to see, but the track is now a uniform height right across the bridge, something we just haven’t been able to get around to until now.

After next weeks re-railing and the following week at Korumburra, we’ll be back here to finish the job, after which we expect it to look like 60mph track!

In other news, one of our well wagons is going through the workshops next week (general maintenance) and Riley has taken the opportunity to finish the painting, thanks again Riley and keep up the good work.

Just a reminder, due to the public holiday there’s no workday tomorrow. But we will be back into it next week, Mon to Wed in Castlemaine & Thurs/Friday re-railing.