Well to beat Monday’s record, we had to have a Thursday record.

223 all clipped up well before lunch time! An excellent effort and yet another first for the gang.

Bruce(s), Clive and Will worked up the hill today (just to mix it up) clipping up along the UP leg. Upon reaching the top, this gang grabbed the gauge and begun clipping up the down leg. Meeting up with the rest of the gang working up the hill doing the same thing. This proved a very effective method and one we’ll no doubt employ many more times.

Just to remind you exactly what a biscuit and clip look like. This clip is known as a PR clip, which has all the identical characteristics to an E clip except it’s shape.

With the ballast returned to the track and a tamp through, the job really has come together fast and looks fantastic.

But as we’d completed the task well ahead of schedule, more work was found in the form of fastening removal in the next section. Clive and Bruce went ahead some 300 sleepers clearing the way for the spike and screw pullers. With all the required fastenings removed from curve 9 to Sawmill Road Crossing. 176 concretes are needed here (will seem like only an afternoon’s work now!)

The jewellery was also collected and sorted into drums. All that awaits is for the sleepers to be loaded and dropped out.

Yet another stunning effort from the gang, they’re certainly an excellent crew and without them our railway wouldn’t be making these enormous leaps and bounds forwards.

Tomorrow will start with finishing off tamping today’s works, then onto preparing the last of the 80lb rail at Muckleford.

Well just on principle, we’ve broken yet another record! With 223 concrete sleepers inserted into tangent 10-11 today! This completes this straight.

It all went pretty well like clockwork today, with little to no breakdowns or annoyances.

The grabs even got to test out their new pads, welded on last week as the first pads have done so much work they were starting to wear out!

We had an extra person today, which helped greatly, 3 seems the perfect number for this.

Although they’re all under, no jewellery has been dropped out or sleepers tamped up, so that’ll keep us busy in the morning.

Meeting Maldon 8am or on site from 8.30.

The day began with the exciting job of collecting the jewellery, left over from yesterday’s re-railing.

Once all this was sorted and packed away, we had to clear the track for a special train. Not something that occurs very often as we usual insist on no trains during our workdays, however we made a special exception.

Anchors were installed next, before a change of location.

The afternoon was spent at tangent 10-11, distributing concrete sleepers in readiness for next week’s big effort to install 223 concrete sleepers. Moving all the sleepers into place is a big enough job on its own, however we still needed to dodge that special train a few more times which, while a very pleasant thing, did break the work flow a little.

We’ll have gangs running on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday next week, so heaps of opportunity to join in the fun.

An extremelly successful day today, with a further 20 80lb rails installed into tangent 20-21.

Unloading the spiking hammer from the truck in the wonderful morning sun.

And what a glorious morning it was, not cold, sun shining and the feeling of early spring in the air. Unfortunately the wind picked up a bit later on, but it was still very pleasant.

Once all the gear was loaded onto its appropriate trolley and we’d managed to marshall the trolleys and excavator in the right order, we were into it.

We even cheated a little more this time, the digger remained on the track all day, carefully ensuring the rail was placed into the correct location before moving along to slew in the next length in. This actually sped things up a little as all 20 rails were in and bolted up by morning tea.

With Rolf handling the mighty rail saw in style, the closure too was cut and bolted up before morning tea, a very good achievement.

All the sleeper plates were inserted first today, often we do them in batches with the gauging and drilling, but this actually seemed to work well for the gang today.

The clipping of the steel sleepers followed this process, being much like concrete sleepers in the way gauge is fairly absolute, so it’s much easier to set them, rather than need to tweak things once the timber’s all spiked up.

Bruce hard at it on the spiking hammer, with the tamper hot on his heels.

By afternoon smoko, almost all holes were drilled, spikes stood with only driving left to go. Even Will jumped down from the digger to lend a hand (only right near the end though…).

An excellent days work.

We only have a very short supply of 80lb rail left now. We’ll use this up within the next month.

However it won’t quite be enough to see us out of this straight (the whole section between Maldon and Muckleford in fact) which is a little frustrating as the section it needs to join up to will be very much within sight! We have lots of very short rails, which we may be forced to used, which isn’t desirable.

However, we are still hopeful that VicTrack will come good with their offer of rail from the now closed Castlemaine – Maryborough line (a lot of which is 80lb). We hope it coincides nicely with us using up all our current Rail ex Bandiana.

Tomorrow will be a big tidy up from today, breaking up more 60lb rail to recover bolts and hopefully distributing concrete sleepers if time allows.