A new week and well refreshed crew resulted in a very productive Monday.

After today’s effort we have fastened down both straight rails in the turnout, which required cutting to appropriate lengths and lining to ensure they were perfectly straight.

Here Bazz and Ian are cutting and drilling rail.

Drilling some more holes before bolting up the rails and fastening them down.

The team tidying up after a long days work, very proud of their efforts.

Back at the other end of the job and concrete pouring has begun, this should be completed and well on the way to curing once we’ve completed the turnout.

We’ll be on site all this week, still plenty of time to help out!.

Most of today was spent preparing the rest of the turnout and beginning the installation.

But first off we level some more crushed rock and gave a small tamp to the straight track near the sheds, ready for concreting.

The gang smoothing off after the tamping.

Ian from the workshops spent the day on a jumping jack compacting the rock around the sleepers ready for the concrete pour.

The end product, looking very smart!

Unrelated, but we had some entertainment today, the lift of an X class. It was certainly the main discussion point over afternoon tea.

The first bits fixed down, from now on we should have fairly plain sailing as it is largely a big mechanco set.

Well be back all next week, so please if you’re free and interested, you’re very welcome to join us.

Today we begun the turnout construction.

First by sorting and precisely placing the timber in accordance with the old VR diagram.

After which the turnout components were prepared for installation.

Tony and Wally replacing damaged point chairs.

While Rolf and Ian attend to freeing up seized bolts on the other side.

The old spanner is often required in turnouts, as there is not enough space for the rattle guns. Here Tony tightens the bolts for the point chairs.

Last off was to place those bits and pieces onto the point timbers. It was certainly a good moment when the timbers lined up almost perfectly with the turnout itself. The string line here is the reference line for which everything is placed.

Here we are using two tapes to triangulate the distance of the two blade ends (toes), to ensure they are completely square.

Unfortunately the turnout bits available to us had been slightly bent at some point in their life, so the ‘BUDA’ or rail bender was needed to correct the bends. Here Will is closely monitoring the bending while Rolf bends the rail using the jack. This takes a bit of effort and judgement to get the angles right, but you’ll be pleased to know we ended up with perfect results.

The string line showing the location of the V crossing in relation to the other components. Getting this correct is the most critical part in the turnout construction and much fine tuning and double checking was done to reach this point.

We didn’t just tackle the turnout today, we also bolted up some rails for the next section.

As we were joining rails of different heights, we found we didn’t have our levels exactly correct, but that was quickly remedied by removing some sleepers and digging out.

After correcting the heights the bolting up occurred. Once the turnout is in, we’ll be putting in the missing rail and connecting it up.

After a very successful day, the job is really starting to take shape.

Well be back there tomorrow and all of next week if you’re interesting in coming along and helping out.

More action at Bendigo, mainly in the rain unfortunately! But it’s staring to look like a real railway.

By lunch we’d laid out the rest of the rail, cutting and drilling as required. We had spiked one leg and were in the middle of fixing down the other when the drill jammed and we decided we needed lunch!

The rain really set in after lunch, here the gang is jacking the new track ready for tamping, normally a simple task but made rather uncomfortable by the pouring rain.

As a reasonable lift was required, lots of rock was needed during the tamping process. The gang is busily shovelling in rock as the tamper fills and compacts the void below.

Tomorrow will see a bit more rock material added and levelled, then we’ll be onto building a new turnout. It should be a very interesting day.