With all the rain we’ve had lately, the blocked drains along the line are becoming very obvious.

We set out to remove a kinked joint near Rowe Street crossing, which we had comfortably achieved by morning tea.

The kink is quite obvious here, with the image below showing the smoother joint and process of lining.

This has been on our list for a while, it’s nice to tick off these jobs that’ve been hanging over us for a while.

After the lining, the nearby drains came into our sights.

The culvert on the Down side of Rowe Street was well overgrown and heavily silted, some careful digging cleared the way for water.

While in the region we improved the side drains, which had also silted up, not allowing water to drain from around the sleepers.

We continued that right around the curve to near Maclise Street.

Around at Maclise street we tackled the UP side culvert, which turned out to be completely block for about half of its length.

The run away drain for the water was filled in some years ago and since then there hasn’t been any real drainage around the crossing.

Lots of prodding, poking and scrapping was needed to get any water flow!

But eventually flow it did. Quite an exciting moment after almost two hours of battling!

It’s never a real day on the track without at least one funny story, Tony’s turn this time.

This pic captures him in free fall on his way into the drain pit, after somehow loosing his footing (he was already kneeling so we’re not too how he did it). Thankfully he seemed to have a good laugh despite being soaking wet!

After lots of hard work and a cup of tea to celebrate we ended up with a functioning culvert. We still need to finish the away drain but that may need to wait until the ground dries out enough to get the digger in, at the moment there’s enough fall to drain near the track.

We managed to fit in just over half a day today, before the rain came.

We spent the morning preparing more 80lb rail, 29 lengths in fact, to complete tangent 14-15.

Here Rolf, Tony and Trevor are drilling rails, today was mainly drilling with only 2 cuts needed. It varies depending on the stacks, but overall there should be as much drilling as cutting required based on how the rails were cut for transport.

The camera isn’t quite showing the sky as dark as it was, however we knew by the dark sky from mid morning that the rain was coming.

The wagons with their rails loaded, the chance was also taken to stack the shorter lengths, now giving us room to stack and sort some turnouts we recently retrieved from Dynon.

The neat stack of short lengths (and odd bits). This is likely to become a fairly permanent fixture at Muckleford, our other piles are diminishing rapidly.

All the short rail should comfortably sit in one pile, being available as required over the next few years, likely to find its way into yards during upgrades and works.

A job which we’ve been slowly working through is joint lifting and tamping between Muckleford and Castlemaine.

We were planning on being out re-railind today, but as tomorrow’s forecast is poor, along with early next week, if we get rained out then it’ll be next Thursday before we’d be able to finish the job anyhow.

The joints on the Castlemaine section have dipped badly over the past few years and despite tamping them up using just the excavator, around 12 months ago, they’ve settled again. So we’ve undertaken some jacking and tamping, as this is generally more successful.

We set out from Muckleford station and by morning tea we’d reached the curve before Farmers Bridge. Here Norm, Mal and Rolf are about to spring back into action after a cuppa. The jacks are already in place in the background, ready for a squeeze.

This area near the culvert has been giving us trouble for a long time, so a good lift was undertaken and lots of ballast shovelled in to fill the big voids left behind. A big improvement, which is very noticeable even in the excavator.

The day finished heading down to Sawmill Road, with Artie posing here, track jack in hand, packing up after the last lift.

This section near the top of the hill, highest point in this section, had some terrible dips, largely due to some old rabbit warrens, now long dormant but still likely to settle more. You’ll likely see us back here in the coming years.

The rest of the gang returning the gear to truck after a big day. Another couple of days like this and we’ll be into Castlemaine, giving a much smoother ride for trains and track alike.

Tomorrow’s forecast is a bit gloomy but we’ll still try and get some rail drilling and cutting done at Muckleford. We’ve got lots of shelter there if the rains do start.

We’re back into the full swing of it on the VGR, with the next re-railing project now fully prepared and just awaiting the man power.

The next section will be the other leg of tangent 14-15. This time aiming for 30 rails in the two days (3 more than last time).

The pic above from the digger shows a bright light which is in fact the Y class with a wagon load of rail that is about to be unloaded.

By the close of play we’d dropped out and positioned all the rails. We’ve bolted up strings of 3 rail lengths, so we’ve got 10 strings ready to install to make up the 30. Here John takes a breather after we bolted up the last string.

While Ian drops out the last of the fish bolts. This section pictured will actually be part of the next project but as the rail was already on the wagon it was easiest to distribute it today.

Depending on weather and man power we’re hoping to tackle this on Thursday and Friday.