Well after this week, we’re almost ready to begin re-railing the remainder of tangent 15-16.

Thursday saw the gang busy preparing 80lb rail at Muckleford. It’s amazing just how small the stacks of rail are becoming, with each session now seeming to have a big influence on the remaining stocks.

Here Bruce shows his skill with the rail saw, it’s not the most exciting job but unfortunately it still needs to be done.

While Malcolm operates the rail drill. This is actually the much easier device to operate, no more exciting than the saw, but a lot quieter.

The digger is working away in the background loading up the already complete rails, ready for transport to site.

Our Prison workforce was out with the whipper snippers again on Thursday, focussing their efforts on the very over-grown area around Muckleford Creek Bridge. The result is stunning!

Thursday’s gang complete more than enough rail for the immediate needs, but ran out of time to get it all loaded, so half an hour or so was spent Friday morning loading up the remaining 17 or so rails along with all the needed jewellery.

Once all rails and jewellery were loaded, a little hard to see here as they’re on the far wagon, the train was taken out to site near Donkey Farm Track.

A quick scrape through with the Mud Bucket saw a nice even surface for the rail to be dropped out on. This is particularly critical where we’re dropping out 80lb rail where 60lb is still in place on both legs. We need to ensure the slightly taller rail is as low as possible to avoid any clearance issues under the rolling stock.

We even made use of our special train to transport back some concrete sleepers and re-usable timber sleepers left over from the recent upgrade of the level crossing.

The end of the day saw all the fishplates dropped out, allowing the bolting together to begin on Tuesday. We even managed to get out a pallet of sleeper plates, taking us through about 1/3 of this leg.

The pictures don’t do the impressive length of rail awaiting installation justice. Normally we haven’t got enough rail prepared to drop it all out in one go, but it certainly looks like we mean business!

The re-railing, of at least 30 of the 45 lengths dropped, out will be taking place this Thursday and Friday, with a big preparation day on Tuesday. So if you’re available to help on any of those days, please feel free to come along. Meeting at Maldon from 8am.

Well today we installed the last 25 sleepers in the UP end of the curve, we can now proudly say this curve is done!

Yesterday’s heat was a distant memory as a large lightning storm with accompanying rain pelted down throughout the morning, making us run for cover on a few occasions.

By morning tea, we’d removed all the old timber and inserted the concrete.

It all just seemed to go like clockwork today, with the methods and patterns well established.

One of the joys of clipping up the concrete sleepers is there’s no noisy equipment! It’s also a fairly easy task with this many people, meaning you can plug away at a steady pace for hours. John, Rolf, Neville and Trevor had by now got the system of clipping down to a fine art.

Some rock moving and tamping saw the job fit for traffic. It’s amazing just how good this curve looks.

A storm hit right on cue for lunch. John being the only one with enough foresight to bring protection! (the rest of us just ran for trucks)

The ballast regulated final product. It’ll be sensational when all our curves are of this quality. A not to unreasonable expectation these days.

We even found the time this afternoon to sort the removed timber. Re-usable we bundled and strapped, while the rubbish was piled for future disposal.

This week has seen 105 sleepers installed, taking it to a total of 161 concrete sleepers installed in the curve. It’s a proud moment for the civil gang, not only is our productivity incredibly high, we’ve completed the job in its entirety and should have a maintenance free curve for years to come.

Today saw the bulk of curve 9 completed with 1 in 3 concrete sleeper replacements. Previously 56 sleepers were installed and after today an addition 80 are in. It was a hot day, but as always the gang soldiered through, completing an astounding amount of work.

A small gang of 4 on Tuesday saw 33 of the 80 inserted and half fastened down. Tuesday also saw the screws removed from all 80, greatly speeding things up today. Here Bruce and Clive survey Tuesday’s works.

The same 50mm lift as undertaken previously was also done, using the tamper to lift the rail from the unfastened sleeper, supported by a wooden block then tamping of the adjacent sleepers to hold it up.

One the lift was complete, removing the old timber is a rapid process, taking only around 30 seconds per sleeper.

The scarifier then worked it’s magic, cleaning out the trench for the replacement concretes.

Inserting the concretes is now a bit easier with our modified timber sleeper grab. It’s had the jaws removed and replaced with flat steel plates, it puts a good use to a tool that hasn’t been touched since we got the big grabs!

The grab, being much smaller allows for more delicate placing and adjustment of the sleeper, it’s also slightly more delicate on the concrete.

The usual array of tools were then used to fasten up the sleepers, as per the same method used previously. The gang has really got the swing of it now, racing through the job.

Some tidying up with bucket and a tamp right through the section has it looking absolutely marvellous.

We’re extremely proud of our efforts in today’s really quite uncomfortable heat, around 35 degrees.

We’ve only got 27 left to install at the UP end of the curve, which will be tomorrows job.

With that we’ll have completed our first curve with concrete sleepers at this spacing. It means big things for ongoing works and maintenance, as there will be around 160 sleepers here that won’t be needing cyclic replacements.! That’ll really start adding up once all the curves are done.

Join us at Maldon from 8am tomorrow or out on site from 8.45am to check out the works for yourself.

The past two days have been very odd jobsy days.

Yesterday started out by cleaning up all our piled up jewellery beside the line. This is all from our recent re-railing efforts.

The items were sorted into drums, making re-use, storage or disposal much easier.

With all hands on deck, the team raced through the piles in the bush. Overall looking a much tidier line-side.

Some scrap and various items around Muckleford were also picked up, to help clean up for Mucklefest, which is this weekend so why not check it out. Details on the VGR website.

The dreaded job of dog spike sorting took us up to lunch. It’s hard work fishing the spikes out of piles like this, but we have filled two drums, which will well and truly cover our next re-railing effort.

The typical lunch ritual took place in Castlemaine, finding any shade available. The sun’s certainly starting to show its strength with hats and sunscreen now an essential.

Our trip into Castlemaine wasn’t just for lunch, it was to complete the cleaning up along the platform that we hadn’t quite finished Monday.

Lots of exciting shovel work here from the gang, but the end result certainly looks very presentable.

The digger was aiding where possible, however it unfortunately isn’t the neest close to the rail as damage to the fastenings and sleepers is possible, hence the shovel work in those areas.

The last 80 years of built up debris along the platform edge was starting to get a bit overwhelming. So delicately scooping it out with the bucket has brough the levels back to where they should. Unfortunately no one ever sees down there, except for us.

Today’s efforts were all focused around distributing more concrete sleepers at curves 8 and 9. This took up the majority of the day, with about 175 sleepers dropped out.

This view is from the Y along the train on the way to the drop out.

Next week will be back into re-sleepering with concrete. Hopefully completing curve 9. Tuesday will be a workday in preparation for this, as we learn from last time a lot could be done to speed up the process. Meeting Maldon 8am