An action-packed day of collecting sleeper from the stockpiles and dropping out as needed beside the track.

We did, however, get to test a rather uninspiring, but actually amazingly effective ballast brush, developed earlier this week in the hope of reducing the backbreaking labour of removing rock from around the dogspikes.

Mark 2 will use something a bit better than a steel rope found lying in the grass, however consider we’ve cobbled it together for less than $20, we’re staggered at the result, it requires about 4 passes over the rail to get a good result, especially in the heavy rock, it managed 4 passes over each rail from Pipeline Crossing to the start of the long straight near Bendigo Road, which has probably saved us nearly 1 full weeks worth of work flicking rock away manually – definitely worth the hassle.

A follow us with the blower has left things looking very neat and tidy, with the spikes clearly exposed and the foot of the rail clearly visible, important factors for the upcoming resleepeering works.

The great plume of dust John was blowing around here did eventually settle, however, not before coating him thoroughly.

The sleeper dropping out went very smoothly. We didn’t do a count of the exact number we handled today. However, it would be nudging 1000.

The dropped out sleepers really do put the job into a nice visual perspective now, it’s an enormous number of sleepers!

We’ve made the job a little bit smaller today however, by stacking and bundling up all the gluts that had been used to stack the sleepers in the piles, we’ll collect those up at some stage and rehome them.

The main purpose of today’s activity, was to make room to unload a couple of sleeper trains tomorrow, which given the cuttings, embankments and wet ground, are a bit few and far between.

Tomorrow’s crew will meet at Maldon from 8am, our sleeper train should be leaving Maldon shortly after 8.30, all going well.

Following on from the rain earlier this week, things are now drying out again and we’ll be back into the exciting job of moving around Concrete Sleepers again tomorrow.

Meeting at Maldon at 8am, after then we’ll be somewhere between Maldon and Pipeline Crossings, the main bush track through there is nice and dry for anyone heading out that way, the track immediately beside the railway however is very muddy with big puddles.

On the first workday for 2024, we spent the day cutting up fallen trees, a result of the recent storms.

We had quite a number between Muckleford and Sawmill Road that had fallen, obviously a bit of heavy wind passed through that area. Lots of smaller trees had fallen beside the track and across the access road which all needed cutting up and moving to more suitable locations. That took us most of the day to sort out and tidy up.

There won’t be a workday tomorrow, due to both diggers breaking down on Wednesday (now repaired), we’re a bit behind on a few other tasks so we’ll postpone any further workdays now until next Thursday (11th), give us a chance to catch up before we put everything back into heavy use.

Certainly not a record setter day, but we still managed to get a good few hundred sleepers distributed out beside the track today.

The main dropout locations were by the 87 mile post, in whatever space was available between the cuttings to stockpile the sleepers.

Once the first load was out, it was back to Maldon to collect the small stockpile that had accumulated there, it wasn’t a full load, but still enough to warrant doing.

We even managed a third partial load, with the wagons a little over 1/2 loaded at Muckleford and distributed before parking the wagons up at Maldon for the Christmas period, there isn’t a great number more concretes expected over the next while, however there’s a few other items that’ll be nice to get out of Maldon while there is a few empty wagons available.

Inkeeping with the recent tradition, the digger held us up for half hour or so today, while we rotated a couple of tyres to better place a punctured one for the trip back home from Muckleford, in all fairness we’ve probably got around 3 years longer than we should have out of that tyre! It still has a transmission issue, but it appears to be improving somewhat, meaning the machine is still usable in non critical work. However, we’ll get back onto that issue in the new year.

No workday tomorrow, that’s more than enough work for this year!

A massive thankyou to everyone for another fantastic and extremely productive year, wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Looking forward to catching up again in the new year, with workdays starting back from Thursday 4th January.