Sorry about the lack of updates this past week, it’s been busy!

The week was highly successful with another 150 concretes installed, this took us all the way to the start of the curve.

It’s very hard to tell in these pics, but we have now been through all the stacks of sleepers in the area and dropped out towards the Bridge, ready to continue on.

We had a test run of T395/Y157 pass through the worksite on Thursday, which we piggy backed onto to make a civil transfer.

The next couple of weeks will be a bit quieter, as we’ve got quite a few away, however we do have a large number of bonfires that will need tackling prior to the fire season beginning so we’ll be getting onto those.

Tomorrow’s crew will meet at Maldon at 8am.

We ended up having a very productive week on the concrete sleepers front, with 262 sleepers installed.

We’ve used some low profiles near the crossing as it’ll likely be the last thing we relay in concrete given how recently it was renewed (2017) and the ramping is much easier with these.

Everything was going very well… until it wasn’t!

The little digger developed an issue in a very awkward location, so a bit of bush mechanics later… it’s now more accessible but also more vulnerable, but inside an hour, we were back in action.

The big digger did substitute for a while, however it’s strengths don’t lie in the delicate work, but it kept us going.

Once back in action, the little one was back in full swing, we’ve even perfected the clipping up fadtclips using the grabs, so we’re quite happy about that, saves lots of backbreaking effort.

The well wagons were cleared of their loading and debris and reloaded with reclaimed timber sleepers from the week.

Tamping and cleaning followed, with the end resulting looking quite respectable.

In other news, Maldon station has seen a bit of a change, with a Bills Trough installed out the front to give the area a nice historic touch.

I would highly recommend googling ‘Bills Troughs’ it’s quite an interesting story and this is one of Maldon’s originals, so it’s nice that the Maldon Heritage Network have decided to have it on display at our Heritage station.

Next week will be more sleepers, Monday’s crew will meet at Maldon at 8am before heading out to Muckleford.

Well, we’re back into the resleepering program, with a nice little section largely completed today from Chapmans Lane.

We’ve inserted 124 sleepers and have another 5 to put in tomorrow to have this complete. This takes us just shy of the Home Signal. However, given the good rate of progress so far this week, we’ll hopefully get to the signal comfortably, which will be about halfway along this straight.

Tomorrow’s crew will be meeting at Muckleford from 8.30am, clipping up the last few sleepers and getting the next bit ready.

The week just gone saw us make good headway into getting concrete sleepers dropped out, ready for resleepering from Chapmans lane towards the Bridge.

We made good use of the digger telehandler combo to get sleepers out of Muckleford Yard efficiently – as the dropout location was close by, it worked well.

Once we’d exhausted the supply in Muckleford we headed out to the stockpiles near where we were dropping out, these required sorting through to sort the usable from the requires further attentions. In the end, the rain dumped hard and saw us have to stop just prior to finishing the job. However, there is very little to go.

This section was largely already 4 hole fishplates, however a few 6 holers remain, we’re part way through knocking that over.

This coming week will see us actually replace some sleepers, starting at the Crossing and heading in the Down Direction.

However, we’ve had a few extra commitments pop up for Monday – so no Workday on Monday. Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday are looking perfectly promising however, so we’ll be meeting at Maldon at 8am or on site (Muckleford) from 8.30am.