A jack, pack and tidy up of yesterday’s work left it looking very smart, unfortunately it really shows up how rough the remaining timber section is now, not too long to go now and this section should be complete.

We spent a good portion of the day ballasting and tamping the new turnout in Maldon, which has come up looking an absolute treat.

The afternoon was spent transferring some machinery down to Castlemaine in readiness for a few jobs there early next week.

All going well, we’ll be onto track inspection tasks on Tuesday, most likely starting at Castlemaine, however time will tell, check back Monday night to confirm.

An excellent day was had today, with an additional 149 concrete sleepers installed into Tangent 20-21.

Tuesday’s crew did do the preparation of unspiking 1 in 4, removing anchors etc… however the bulk of the work occurred today and at a great pace.

We have learnt the process is much quicker if the area that was ramped previously has all the spikes removed, as these don’t have much room below the sleepers for knocking off.

It was all pretty regular and normal, nothing new or exciting, however it did seem to flow very well.

A quick spray with soluble oil really does make all the difference.

By close of play today, it was all clipped up, lined and looking very smart.

It may seem a bit hard to tell from the pics. However, before it was a very rough, tired, and in all honesty pretty poor section of track, while the resleepered bit looks leaps and bounds better and has an amazingly better line and top, even without us running through with the jacks yet.

Tomorrow’s crew will meet at Maldon at 7.45am, then out to site to jack, pack and tidy up, before we head into Maldon to Ballast the new turnout!

At 11am today, John, our resident musician, gave the bugle call to mark remembrance day.

There was a big turn out of 1, however, we hope the call was heard through bits of Maldon as we remembered.

Friday was successful, with more mowing knocked over (the bulk of it really) and some piles of rubbish burnt and then extinguished ahead of the fire bans.

Tomorrow’s crew will, among other odd jobs, begin preparation for some more concrete sleepering out past the old tip crossing, hopefully this week will see another 120 or so installed, which gets us that bit closer to reaching the curve which is just out of site over the rise currently.

Meeting Maldon 8am tomorrow

We had all the toys out for a play today, with the aim being to reduce the lineside grass and remove a few bits of foul foliage.

The area between Boundary Trk and Rifle Range Bridge had lots of little bits of foliage that were close or hitting trains, so these have been removed and left in the bush to help give a bit of habitat.

The flail mower was off working closer to Castlemaine and the difference down that was is very impressive.

We even tackled a rather messy area of gorse and blackberry, using the ever so delicate rip method we’ve become quite good at.

All these items have been loaded into the tipper and taken to Muckleford for disposal tomorrow.

In amongst all this, quite a bit of whipper snipping has been done around Winters Flat Bridge and the crossing. We’ve got a bit more to go tomorrow but we’re looking pretty good.

The fire restrictions come in Monday and we’ve got a bonfire heap at Muckleford to burn tomorrow ahead of that. As such we’ll be meeting at Maldon briefly around 7.45am, then down by Winters Flat Bridge for a little more mowing, then hopefully we’ll make our way through to Muckleford around 10am.