Slight change of plans for tomorrow’s workday, we’ll now be working in the loco depot at Castlemaine from 8.30am, meeting Maldon 8am for those who are joining us there.

We made use of today’s rather wet and miserable weather to tend to a few odd jobs.

The first being the final jacking and tamping of the new sleepers on Muckleford Creek Bridge, now that the ballast wasn’t quite so wet, it had actually settled down very nicely on its own, but we perfectly a few minor little bits we just didn’t get time for a few weeks ago.

We then installed timber wedges besides the runners as required at the UP end of the Bridge, to help compensate for the deck movement we undertook a few weeks back, the wedges are simply to take up the slack and stop it wandering back over time.

The rest of the day was more or less spent fixing a geometry fault that was developing near this turnout at Muckleford, this one is due to embankment settlement, given how wet this year is (on top of last year’s wet year), it’s likely we’ll be attending to many of these settlement faults in the coming months.

Anyway, the end result is a much improved piece of track, which should also ride much better.

Thursday and Friday are nominally planned as inserting sleeper plates near Sawmill Rd, however, the weather is not looking at all kind, with a decent amount of rain forecast for both days, so please check back here Wednesday night for details of Thursday.

We’ll be back into civil gang activities from tomorrow, with tomorrow’s first task to undertake the follow up tamping at Muckleford Creek Bridge.

Meeting at Maldon at 8am or out at Muckleford Creek Bridge from 8.30am.

Well, after the great success of Thursday’s decking efforts, Friday proved to be a damp affair, however we still managed to achieve our aims, albeit in the rain.

We managed to get everything fixed up, ballasted and roughly tamped (only roughly as we’ll need to re-pack this in a few weeks once the ballast has vibrated into all the voids below the sleepers.

We then proceeded to undertake a significant number of load tests of the new decking, with the only real outcome being it is at least as stable, if not more so than the timber decking adjacent to it!

We even sat a Y class on the deck for half an hour or so while we had a cuppa, with no notable movement present, which is pretty ideal! We will be monitoring the sag of decking between the beams, it’s only the weight of the ballast that causes that sag, but we may find in warmer weather that could exaggerate, however a very lightweight beam in the deck centre would remedy that issue entirely if it turns out to be so.

A keen eye might also notice the graffiti on the Y class… it was coincidently Will’s birthday on Friday, and the workshop boys decided that needed a level of public announcement.

This week will actually be a week of no civil activity, as both staff are taking leave and given how active the gangs have been in recent times, it seems like a good time to give everyone a week off to recover from the freezing cold. From Tuesday next week, things will return to usual however. A blog post will be made with details on Monday next week.