Today started off with some anchoring, to prevent rail creep. We focused on the steep section on the UP side of Farmers Bridge in the morning, moving over the top of the hill towards Castlemaine in the afternoon.

The process to not overly exciting but starts by using the jaws of the grabs to push away rock from under the rail where the anchor is to go.

The grabs seem to have an endless number of uses.

The section is all 60lb D class rail, for which anchors have never been produced. However by placing a shim on the foot of the rail a 60lb AS class rail anchor does the job perfectly. Here the shim is the reddish piece of material on the rail foot.

The anchor is then positioned onto the shim.

And driven home with a strong hammer blow.

Job done. Were not sure exactly how many we installed today but it would have been well over 200.

The afternoon was a different experience, installing our new speed signs! Here near Bendigo Road. The truth probably is that it doesn’t take 6 people to install a sign, but we all know how to do it for next time now!

Here Will and Norm try to get it straight and vertical, neither of which they actually achieved! But the signs will still do the job.

Down near curve 20 and an action shot of Will on the jack hammer starting the ground spike for the sign.

A gentle tap home with a sledgehammer finishes what the jackhammer won’t.

The post holding the sign is then inserted into the spike and secured by a locking pin. Seen here being driven home.

The odd sign was already in place, needing only the wording changed. Here going from 15mph to 25 mph.

After working through the whole line, the final sign was installed in Castlemaine. This sign also includes instructions for our radio channels. A similar sign (minus the speed) was installed near Rowe Street.

We’ll now await comment from our crews as to the sign positions and make any changes required.

We’ll be back into anchoring tomorrow, finishing off the down hill towards Sawmill Road.

Over the coming weeks we will increasing the speed limits over much of the railway. In reality we’re actually just removing lots of temporary speed restrictions!

All the re-railing works, recent tamping works and re-sleepering have got the track up to a much higher standard. This is a real credit to all the volunteers who have put in all the hard work.

With the upcoming increase in speeds, a few test trains have been run to the new speeds to determine any areas of ‘rough’ track. All the previously known rough spots had been tended to, but faster speeds did highlight a few to attend to.

None of them were major but were still noticeable from a locomotive. The first was a small dip near Bendigo Road Crossing.

After a tamp and boxing up it looked much better.

All the locations tended to today were between here and Muckleford and although a whole lifetime could be spent getting every last little dip out, it is well and truly now fit for rhe purpose.

Here’s a before and after of what we attended to. Near Donkey Farm Track was this bad dip, particularly in the closest rail. John’s digging out room to install jacks.

Not really a perfect after shot as the angle is different but it is noticeably less dipped. These are fairly quick jobs that hopefully now our track is in much better condition we can dedicate a bit more time to.

As promised, today saw lots of drilling and spiking but we knocked that over quite quickly so we spent the afternoon lifting and tamping our latest efforts. The call for help yesterday was answered and an excellent gang was on hand.

We set off this morning to test our new drill, but very quickly decided it’s still missing a bit…. The bit that helps centre the drill in the hole of the sleeper plate. So we abandoned mission very quickly so as not to damage too many drill bits.

We were hampered somewhat by showers during the morning, but only giving up during the worst of it however. Here the spiker is about to be fired up. All the holes down to near the trucks have been drilled with spikes started.

A bit of a jump in time and the drilling was finished with the spiking well under way. Here Trevor hangs onto the hammer nearing the end of the job.

The hammer in action, although it vibrates quite a bit it is actually quite easy to use. Lunch time was called at 12.02pm just as the last dog spike was driven in.

After lunch a quick emu parade to collect all the jewellery was undertaken. This job takes about 5 minutes with a crew of this size and about half a day with only two!

Tamping was next on the agenda, to remove the excessive cant that had come about from settling and tamping during the previous works. Through this process the dips were also removed. Here the jacks are installed at appropriate intervals to lift the rail evenly, we started by lifting the dips from the outside or high leg followed by raising the low leg to the correct level.

It’s a bit hard to appreciate the vast improvement just from the picture but before the lift this scene was much more reminiscent of a roller coaster.

A profile pic of the jacking, showing some of the dips we were aiming to remove.

The finish product is actually very impressive, Pete certainly thinks so!

No jobs finished without some tidying up. Largely aesthetic here but it certainly makes these curves look to be a very high standard for a tourist railway.

By the afternoon the sun was shining, the rain long gone and the temperature very comfortable, excellent conditions to end yet another outstanding week’s work.

Timing is everything, just as the gates were locked after putting away the vehicles, the rains returned rather spectacularly, back lit by the fading sun.

Not only is a day out on the track always a great achievement, it’s often a very enjoyable experience all around.

We’ll today saw the last 19 80lb rails installed in Tangent 14-15.

We set sail with out trusty fleet from a slightly warmer than usual Maldon, it was already 2 or 3 degrees today, much warmer than recent mornings.

We were hit with a light rain shower around 10 so decided this was the perfect morning tea time.

We’d almost finish pulling spikes on the 60lb by then and had started slewing the 80lb across.

Morning tea was in the truck, to avoid the rain and it took no time at all for Clive’s warm coffee to fog up the windows.

After lunch and the spiking hammer shows where works had progressed to. We have only spiked 1 in 3 today, enough to still run a train if we do run into any trouble tomorrow.

It’s hard to see where we started but it’s about 4 rail lengths in front of the truck.

Of course, without fail our new rails fell only inches short of the existing 80lb on the bridge! So we decided we would actually use an additional new piece of 80 and remove some of the lower quality rail (all that was available at the time) that was on the bridge.

Here Rolf cuts the existing rail to length.

Rail cut and just awaiting the rolling in of the new length. These plates are from the 80lb already on the bridge and as they were holding the rail to the correct gauge it was a waste to remove them, so just one spike was pulled allowing for the old rail out and the new in!

Afternoon tea and job almost finished, well today’s part anyhow.

After a quick tamp to lift low sleepers for drilling as well as bolting in the last rail, we packed up camp, here the truck and trollies are making their way back to the crossing for loading onto the truck.

Using the excavator the gear is craned carefully onto the back of our small crane truck. We have quite a few toys these days so this process does take a little while.

We’ll be out again tomorrow to finish off the drilling and spiking, but we’ll be testing out our new sleeper drill! So check back to see how we go.

It’s looking fairly light on numbers tomorrow so any extra hands would be appreciated, even just to help carry tools and fuel is a real weight off our small gangs shoulders. Maldon from 8am or on site from 8.30am.