After today, all holes were drilled, all spikes were driven and everything is fit for traffic.

A quick tamp through the whole length started off proceedings. It was very evident just how dropped a lot of the old 60lb joints were just by how much gap was present between the sleeper and the new rails, so in doing this we’ve immediately removed a lot of rough track.

At exactly 12 o’clock the last spike was driven and the job was essentially complete!

The afternoon saw more productivity with all the jewellery collected and sorted, a few little tidy up jobs completed as well but amazingly we managed to break up all but 5 lengths of the removed 60lb! A big effort just in itself.

This week’s efforts leave us with only (approx) 75 x 80lb rails left to install in this straight and infact in this whole section (Maldon to Muck). Comfortably 3 weeks work once all the rails are prepared and on site.

The weather, although cold, has finally been kind enough to allow some re-railing. Today saw another 28 lengths installed into tangent 20-21.

We were well underway by 8.15, with John greasing up the final fish plate.

We we a little down on numbers today, as such we didn’t quite finish all the tasks in record speed, however everything was still very nicely under control.

Our trusty gang truck is back on deck after receiving it’s new water pump. We also got to test out the new sleeper drill, which proved to be excellent. It took a little while for the gang to master it, however it certainly reduces the back breaking bending of using the petrol drills. We’ll take lots of pictures of it in action tomorrow.

By days end the gang were all thoroughly exhausted but very proud of our efforts. We’ve clipped up all steel sleepers (quite a lot in this section), spiked the whole straight 1 in 3 as well as having cut and fitted the closure rail to join up with the old 60lb.

Tomorrow should be a comparatively easy day, with a quick run through with the tamper required first up, before a pass with the drill and spiking hammer to finish off the job. Hopefully we’ll get around to breaking up some of the 60lb removed today also. Meeting Maldon 8am or site from 8.15am.

(sorry this has been sitting sneakily in the drafts area since Thursday! Details of works on Thursday 19th July)

Not entirely true, lots of unbolting and cutting too.

Our trusty(?) gang truck has let us down with a failed water pump and the spare won’t be in till Tuesday. So the re-railing was put off a week and we found jobs that didn’t require the truck.

We tackled breaking apart the 60lb in strings from our most recent re-railing effort. We really did this to retrieve the reusable bolts for use in the Castlemaine section as we used up our entire supply on Tuesday.

We didn’t count the exact number that we broke up but it would have to be 200+, a pretty good effort really!

We’ve even tidied up all the fishplates and scrap bolts.

As well, the gang installed a few missing 80lb anchors on the most recent re-railing as well as removing more 60lb anchors in the next section to be done.

Tomorrow will be a bit more breaking up rail, before we head out and change a few sleepers and finish off with some more bolt tightening. Meeting at Maldon 8am.

Well we finished breaking up the 60lb near Bendigo Road this morning.

We only had about 25 lengths to separate, which was a comfortable number for our small gang of 3.

In the afternoon however we set about replacing the 3 sleepers in a row which had been marked as failed in curve 16.

However we very quickly decided that the marks should not have been on all three sleepers, rather just 2, as 1 was still in very good condition.

So we replaced those two and picked on two other nearby failures. As we happened to have a few concretes nearby, they were our insertion of choice.

It’s also a good test to see how concrete will go in this poorer ballast, so far we’ve been very impressed that we’ve seen no signs of pumping or working in similar conditions.

Unfortunately however…. We did break one of the grab hydraulic lines on the digger just after inserting the first concrete sleeper! Which meant we had to install 3 without grabs and in a cutting.

Some cleaver and gentle manouvering with the forks ended up being quite successful, will all 4 clipped, hand packed (because the digger couldn’t operate the tamper while broken) and boxed up before the spare part arrived back! A quick visit on Monday will see these receive a proper tamp.

We’ll have gangs running on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday next week, where we will be tackling re-railing in tangent 20-21.