We had a very successful day today, but first a couple of yesterday’s destruction job, lifting the old one out in panels, this isn’t always the easiest, but it was mostly buried, so in this case it was much easier!

We then spent a considerable amount of time excavating the old gravel ballast to the correct depth, amazing what you can achieve with a lazer level! Believe it or not, this section of the yard is dead flat, it certainly appears to the naked eye to be on quite a slope. We’ve gone down to the base of the old gravel layer, making sure not to touch the clay layer beneath, if we need extra height, we’d be better off to lift everything a few inches as we get access to ballast, rather than dig down into the clay.

Once we’d marked up our datum lines, it was onto the task of dragging the new turnout into position, however we must confess, in the process of dragging it across, it has ended 3mm further Down than the survey marks indicated it should be… we think we’ll be happy to live with that.

We then spent quite some time lining it, which now looks stunning from both directions when sighted through.

The intermediate timber sleepers were marked up and dropped out.

Then the rails to make up the closures were roughly dropped out, no cutting today due to the total fire ban and extreme weather (not as extreme as in other locations in the state thankfully), that’ll be tomorrow’s job, during the cooler weather.

A keen eye might have noticed one concrete sleeoer in the new works, its not going to be staying, rather it is a test job, testing out the new pads and biscuits that arrived today, ahead of resleepering job. These old VR sleepers aren’t standard, required unique pads and biscuits, thankfully when buying in decent quantities the prices for these items come very close to standard biscuit and pad prices, however there’s very few out in the wild for 80/94lb as generally these sleepers were used with bigger rail.

It’s not exactly luck, as there is an engineered drawing for there use with smaller rail, however we can confirm that with 80lb, the gauge is exactly 1600mm! These biscuits are Brown/grey, so a bit different to the normal black ones.

All being well we should comfortably knock this job over this week, a bit of tweaking is required to finish the 3 road connection, however it’ll be usable in some fashion by the weeks end.

We’ll be on site all day tomorrow from 8am, if anyone is interested in helping cut, drill and bolt rails.

Friday saw the 3 road components of the 2/3 road turnout removed at Maldon, with today seeing the whole thing lifted and beginning of preparations to get the new one in, hopefully tomorrow.

We even found the time to get 2 tipper loads of ballast up to the Yard, from a stockpile at Woodlocks ln on Friday, for when it’s time to ballast later this week.

Tomorrow’s forecast to be a bit warm and uncomfortable, however the fire danger rating, unlike other bits of the state, is still low enough for us to work, so we’ll at least make a good start at it and see how we go, we may end up having an early day. Meeting at Maldon from 8am.

We reached a bit of a milestone today, with all the sleepers needed to re-sleeper curve 20 to Pipeline Crossing dropped out track side, plus quite a fair chunk of the balance down to Bendigo Road.

The great mess of gluts that got left behind, has been collected, stacked, strapped and in most cases transported up to Maldon for return to the sector to assist in future concrete sleeper deliveries.

The afternoon was spent at curve 20, where works resleepering 5 days a week will begin from the 4th of March, giving it a final blow and marking up sleeper spacings.

After decades of replacing timber sleepers on a comparatively adhoc basis, the spacings have crept out to being very inconsistent, something we’d like to remedy with the resleepeeing. You’ll notice the extremely high tech device we’ve developed to help with this job… we can probably improve on this, however it does the job.

Tomorrow’s work will be a complete change of pace, with a head start to be made on installing the new turnout in Maldon, the one we assembled almost a year ago! We’ll make use of tomorrow to get the none essentials removed, to allow trains to still run around on Sunday, then from Monday while we’ve got a week long period of no trains, we’ll pull out the old and install the new. Meeting at Maldon from 8am tomorrow.

Tomorrow’s workday will involve collecting some material donated to the railway to help us make a start on some undercover protection for our trucks.

Today saw us make a great start at collecting the items, however first job tomorrow will be unloading a truckload of material at Maldon, before heading off again to collect the rest.

Meeting at Maldon at 8am