We managed a very comfortable 40 concrete sleepers today, installed between Muckleford Yard and Chapman’s Lane.

These have been installed into a roughly 1 in 4 pattern, with a few extra where sleepers were particularly poor.

It was a very comfortable days work, from unspiking, running a 2inch along the length, installing the sleepers and a full tidy up, tamp and box up.

The only thing that would make it better now would be a hundred tonnes of ballast and a production tamp, hopefully those days will come.

This 1 in 4 pattern is something we’ll be progressively working on over the next few years. Continuing on all the way to Maldon. This will effectively pin our gauge all the way and give us a little more flexibility in replacing the remaining timber sleepers, hopefully aligning with more comcrets being made available through the level crossing renewal projects around the state.

Next week will hopefully see us back into rerailing, however, check back here Monday for details of Tuesday as it may end up being a preparation week.

Yesterday’s crew managed to not only remove but also collect all the anchors from Sawmill Road right through to Brown Street, in readiness to begin rerailing.

Tomorrow’s crew will set about renewing sleepers between Muckleford Yard and Chapman’s Ln crossing. We’ll be meeting at Maldon from 8am or out on site from 8.30am.

Friday was spent removing a series of minor track geometry faults between Maldon and Muckleford. None particularly major, however much easier to remove them early and stop a real fault from forming.

They were all in locations which we’ve previously dug out to remove mud, just natural settlement.

By day’s end it was all looking pretty good, without easy access to a production tamper, it’s hard to know exactly where to draw the line with the minor dips etc… however we could easily just keep going forever to get it perfect.

Tomorrow’s crew will have a change of pace, with rerailing preparations beginning near Sawmill Road, with anchor removal. Meeting at Maldon at 8am or out by Sawmill Rd from 8.30am.

We had an extremely successful day in Maldon Yard today.

We replaced 11 failed sleepers in 1 road.

A further 12 more in 3 road.

And we did a mountain of jacking and packing of the various little dips around the Yard.

The tipper even got a bit of action in cleaning up the old sleepers.

Thanks to Maldon’s very shallow ballast depth and underlying soft clay, its very susceptible to settlement, this is not an irregular task, however we really seemed to get it looking better this time, likely a benefit of the improvements to the drainage we did last year.

It all looks quite smart now, with everything tidied up.

The small section of 3 road we’ve worked on looks a million dollars, all levelled and tidily boxed up. When we get a spare month, we’ll attack the rest of the road. However, this is the high traffic end. The rest sees very little use and has a high number of steel sleepers.

And just to embarrass Mal, here’s a shot of him enjoying the first slice of cake, before promptly ensuring everyone else got a piece. We’re very lucky on track, we’ve got several people who bring along a fantastic treat for morning and afternoon tea, a big thankyou to the cooks at home for thinking of us!

Although not part of today’s work, these are the anchors we installed on Tuesday, Victrack kindly donated us some brand new 94lb anchors some time ago and we’ve finally been able to make good use of the.

Tomorrow’s crew will be starting at Maldon at 8am and then heading out the track a little, doing a bit more tamping work, lifting a few low spots between Maldon and Muckleford.