Today was a mixed bag, very quick preparation in the morning followed by some re-sleepering in the arvo.

Before we kicked off today, same place as yesterday, we drove out the gear ready to bolt up the rails dropped out.

We had four of us today, so the bolting up took no time at all. Using two rattle guns and the truck as a work platform, we’d bolted up 12 joints by morning tea!

Again we bolted them into strings of 3, to allow moving later on if required. Here we have the bolting completed and we’re moving strings into their approximate locations.

A job we normally don’t get time to do in the preparation is clearing rocks and debris from around the dog spikes, this is needed to give access when removal of the fastenings.

Some hand shovel work with a quick blow from the blower was undertaken and should free up a couple of people on job day!

After lunch we tended a patch of poor sleepers discovered last week, they were hanging in there but the recent rains have seen to their failure.

The 3 sleepers above (the ones without spikes for plates) we’re the problems and as they’re on a curve, we thought we would test out some more concretes.

We used a different method again here! Digging out the old timber and scraping away the ballast of all 3 sleepers.

As the concretes are a long term solution, we want to get them right first time, as such we measured the exactly locations for the sleepers and discovered where there was 3, there should have been 4. So 4 were installed.

We placed all 4 in between the rails parallel with them, then while jacking the rails, the sleepers were rotated into position.

All of this was actually done using the pallet forks! As we didn’t have the boots for the grab jaws at hand. Overall, although not the reccomended method, the pallet forks and some fine-tuning with the bucket did a great job! Not a scratch to the concrete.

Just prior to clipping up, Tony admires the feat we had just achieved. This method will lend itself very well to cuttings.

Tony and John clipping up the sleepers, this process is incredibly fast compared to spiking, especially now we’ve got the hang of it.

No tamper at hand today, so we jumped on the hydraulic hand tampers (a job you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy) and packed them.

We’re very interested to see how we go here, the ballast is largely gravel, with some rock so it’ll be interesting to see just how they perform.

Some tidy up and they look very smart, this sort of long term infrastructure is a trend we’d like to see all over the railway.

Today’s gang Rolf, Tony, John and Will’s silhouette, admiring their efforts, very impressed and proud of how easy it actually was!

We’ll be out again this Thursday and Friday, keep an eye on the blog for what we do as our plan is to re-rail but the weather is hinting otherwise…

No sooner is one section finished than the next is started.

Today involved removing the old jewellery from last week’s works, scraping clear the 5 foot for rails as well as dropping rails out.

Here with jewellery collected and rock scraped aside, the excavator awaits the arrival of a train, with a wagon of rails attached!

The Y was out on a driver experience trip today, so the opportunity was taken for them to collect the rail wagon at Muckleford and propel it back to the worksite.

After dropping off the wagons (the 2nd was just because it got in the way!) the train departs for Castlemaine.

The rails being dragged off the wagons using the grabs, we’ve discovered that by sliding the rails almost off the wagon, lowering one end then lifting it off with the grabs allows us to lower the rails without dropping them, preventing damaged to them, the track or anything else likely to be in the firing line!

After the wagons had been put away by the returning train and it had run through to Maldon, the next section to be re-railed was scraped ready to receive its new rails.

This is just around the corner from the current works, in tangent 15-16 near Donkey Farm Track. This section has incredibly crippled (permanently bent) rail joints so is a high priority for new rails.

While out with the bucket the drains recieved a scrape too, they weren’t too bad but as always prevention is better than a cure.

Clean drains and scrapped ballast, just awaiting the new rails!

We’ll be out with a crew again tomorrow, bolting up those rails distributed today. Meet us at Maldon from 8 or out on site from 8.30.

Today was full steam ahead into the small section of 60lb left in tangent 14-15 (it’s actually the very slight reverse curves leading to the bridge but very nearly a straight so we refer to it as a tangent most of the time). The up or north leg is this week’s job, with the down leg to follow very shortly.

The team having a good look at their efforts! The foreground is the occupation crossing which has been dug up to allow the re-railing to occur.

Right at the start of works, the rattle gun ready to pull screws, the spike puller in the background and the 80lb in the centre ready to go in.

The 60 starting to come out, with the 80 awaiting pushing across into place.

A couple of Norm, Bazz and Pete as they discuss and pose with the spiking hammer.

Some ‘wheel eye views’ of the spiker in action, working towards the camera driving in the spikes on the way.

The rail through the crossing all spiked down, thankfully the joint is ‘just’ out of crossing, important for bolt tightening later on.

Here Colin admires the joining of the newly installed rail to the existing 80lb over the bridge.

Which means we have retrieved two sets of junction fish plates, always nice to have a few more on hand.

The obligatory lunch time shots, Norm was obviously feeling camera shy so tried hiding by the truck.

By the close of play today all 16 lengths were dogged down and bolted up with only a little over half of them to be tamped up tomorrow for job finished! The gang will be out again tomorrow though, meeting at Maldon from 8 am or back here from 8.30.

Thanks to Bruce for today’s pictures.

Out again this week re-railing. Today was material distributing and preparation to speed things up Thursday and Friday.

First off we set about removing anchors, steel sleeper fastenings and digging out the occupation crossing.

Here Rolf wanders back after dropping out fish bolts.

By lunch we’d drop out all the needed materials and bolted up the rails into lengths of 3. This will be one of our smaller jobs, with only 16 lengths required here.

After the preparations we set about finishing off a few odd jobs, first off was fastening down some steel sleepers that happened to be under joints, not the easiest process but it can done. Here Rolf and John tighten up the last bolt, with a spanner as the rattle gun won’t fit on with the panadol clip in the way. Eventually with resleepering these will be adjusted to remove these problems.

Then onto the exciting job of picking up the old jewellery, the team last week had kindly placed it in piles which made the job much easier.

One job still hanging over from last week was boxing up around the concrete sleepers.

After some ballast regulating with the mud bucket and a bit of shovelling, we have it looking very tidy.

We’ll be out here again this Thursday and Friday to get these 80lb rails in, please feel free to come along and help out.