Today we put in the rest of the sleepers, again a mix of steel and timber.

You can pick the new timbers by their red colour. The short straight above was one of our roughest sections of track, however after an hour of jacking and tamping it now rides very smoothly.

Unfortunately there is a number of ‘crippled’ joints, the rails are bent vertically near the joint, which prevents us getting the track dead flat, but it’s much better… Only all the way to Castlemaine to tamp up now!

After finally managing to get our hands on some sleepers, some nice new red gum, we’ve got back into sleeper replacements.

Our worksite today was near the Maldon tip, replacing life expired and broken sleepers.

This is the first time our new grab has had a real go at sleepers, it’s fantastic and we definitely won’t go back to the old grabs!

We had a few steel sleepers on hand and these were installed also. The pic above shows the finished job, timber sleeper just under the excavator rail wheels and a steel sleeper a bit further up.

We haven’t fastened them down yet, but we will once we re-rail with the 80lb, as fastening now will only weaken the sleepers later on.

We’ve got some more tomorrow, so feel free to have a day in the bush seeing how it’s done!

Among the VGR’s trackwork skills is helping out other organisations with their trackwork.

In the week just gone we assisted Steamrail with some trackwork at their home in the old West Block of the Newport Railway Workshops.

The work largely involved replacing life expired turnout timbers and correcting areas of wide gauge in the plain track.

We mustered our usual kit of trucks, excavator and tools to tackle the job, with the job 90% complete, only not completed due to appallingly weather on the last day.

The works, although for Steamrail, did also include some trackwork for 707 operations and DERMPAV (other groups based at the workshop), which should now see them able to use the yard for several more years without hassle.

Below is a collection of pics from the week:

The team gauging and spiking a turnout after new timbers were installed.

The usual morning tea and lunch rituals are still followed even when working away!

There was generally only a few timbers required in each turnout, however the state of the timbers removed is clear by seeing how easily Malcolm was able to carry them around!

The trusty fleet.

Overall the works went very well, however due to weather we will we back to finish off an urgent job this coming Tuesday and then again in a fortnight’s time.

If you’re a Melbourne resident and would like to come and check out how we do things please feel free to come along, as always the more hands the easier the job.

Well we set another record today, by 11.15am we had the whole 27 lengths spiked in, without help from our prison workforce!!

These pics show the last few lengths being spiked in.

A few of the completed job, featuring our trusty gang truck.

After lunch we clipped up the steel sleepers, collected the old jewellery and sorted it accordingly. Here Trevor and Tony were placing the old jewellery into the bucket for sorting.

Our sights were then directed to preparing for re-railing the other leg.

Using the bucket as a blade allows ballast close to the track to be scrapped away from the work zone and provide an even surface to place the 80lb in before installation.

The next few pics are just to show off our hard work!

It was an enormous two days work, but the result is fantastic, the ride is already billiard table smooth by comparison!

Thanks again to everyone who was able to help out, and watch this space for details of our next re-railing job.