We spent today preparing and beginning the list of works on Winters Flat Bridge. The morning was occupied by loading vehicles and double checking lots of items were in fact on the trucks, while the afternoon was spent ticking a few jobs off the list.

One of these can be seen above, a pile strap was fitted to a pile showing signs of wanting to split, in this case only near the top, besides this splitting the pile is in excellent condition, so a tried and tested solution to arrest the splitting is to either install a bolt through the pile, for a single split, or if it’s a more complex split, such as here, a band is clamped around the pile to prevent any further opening of the cracks. We also had another pile at the Down end which had a split. However, two through bolts were quite sufficient in that case.

The main job however, is to rectify this horridness! It’s a result of a vehicle collision with the bridge some time ago, it’s as ugly as anything, however given the heavy speed limit we’ve got in place, it doesn’t pose any real risk, but it does need correction and has been on the cards for some time. This is the before photo, however we have spent a good hour or so today improving it somewhat, but forgot to get a photo. The issue is related to deck movement, not track movement (the track is very captive between the kerbs so if they move, I.e. get a nudge from a vehicle then they can move the whole lot, such as we see here).

We didn’t have a road closure today, so we’ve left that section until we do on Thursday, when we also need to move a couple of beams back to where they belong, also victims of the incident some time ago.

We’ve got a good few other jobs that’d be nice to knock over there on Thursday / Friday, one being the installation of new low clearance signs, the other being the tightening of all the bolts, particularly those in the roadway area, as these can be a real pain without a road closure. We’re only going to have the road closed for one day, Thursday, with all of the other jobs being away from the roadway on Friday.

We had initially planned doing work here tomorrow, however the weather is looking awful and a total fire ban, preventing us doing any bolt cutting if needed. Thursday’s looking much more friendly.

We’ll be meeting at Winters Flat Bridge on Thursday from 8.30am.

Today became an odd job day, however probably one of the most successful and productive days of this type we’ve had in a long time!

The list of jobs knock over included

– finishing off the 2nd spike puller assembly

– building a second timber sleeper bundling cradle

– getting the flashing light remote box back up and working in the gang truck

– tightening up the jaws on the big digger grabs

– getting the 2 way radio working in the Hyundai and working out what’s needed to get the takeuchi similarly equipped

– a new crane hook was fitted to the yellow crane truck and the old one was cascaded to a spike puller

– lots and lots of small little jobs were knocked over in addition to the above, things we just haven’t had the time to get to until now

We’re pretty much ready to rock and roll with great efficiency into the resleepeering, just the little bridge jobs to tick off next week, and we’ll be ready.

There will be a blog post with details of next week’s work on Monday.

Hot is certainly a good word to describe today, the morning was quite pleasant, with various tasks undertaken, mainly finalising the bridge work preparations, making sure we’ve got spare bolts, sharp chainsaws etc…

We saw a snake in the depot, but lost sight of it passing under the telehandler… we’re wondering if it’s made itself at home in the engine bay as it managed to evade 3 sets of eyes extremely quickly, however none of those eyes were anywhere near brave enough to open the cover to find out!

We then brought all our trucks back to Maldon before all looking at each other, then the strong hot wind and deciding we could achieve nothing productive given the weather. So we called it a day.

We have got the big digger up and running again, a failed electrical plug was the culprit, right down near the head, that has been repaired and given a significant amount of padding to help protect it, next time it’ll likely be due for a new wire to be run to remove a few of the many joins it has.

Tomorrow’s work will all focus on getting ready, not just for bridge work, but for the resleepeeing, we’ve got a few more things to make, weld up and test so hopefully with a few hands we can knock that over in no time and be very productive once the big project kicks off in a few weeks.  Meeting at Maldon from 8am

We successfully managed to paint over all the graffiti along the carriage shed and workshop at Castlemaine today, however due to a digger break down and some complications with the Vline occupation, not much else was achieved.

Tomorrow has been declared a total fire ban, which will curtail our plans somewhat, it’ll also be hot and horrid which will certainly not lead to high productivity. We only have a few odd jobs that need to be attended to, these being the running of trucks from Castlemaine back to Maldon and the like, as such if you’re travelling any distance, please stay home, as we’re very like to finish early. Otherwise for anyone local, meeting at Maldon at 8am.