Tomorrow we’ll be meeting at Maldon from 8am, where we need to prepare several vehicles for the rest of the week.

We’ll then be heading out to Muckleford Creek, however that may not be until 9am or later.

As always following a good storm, we had a tree decide to join us on the ground, but thankfully that was quite easily fixed.

A full patrol including testing of all flashing lights etc… was undertaken this morning. We’ve escaped very lightly, with this being the worst issue, a few trees piled up against Winters Flat Bridge. Until the water subsides, we won’t be able to remove the trees, however no damage has been caused.

The whole district lost power when water flooded into the Castlemaine substation, however thankfully flood water receded much quick that expected and we haven’t run into any trouble with the power being out for an extended time.

The flow at Muckleford Creek reached places it hadn’t for a very long time, and would appear to have saturated some of the usually very dry areas. The saturation has led to one pile settling a little further, around 6mm (when under load, we made use of the T class doing another of its test runs) more than previously, so we’ve placed a temporary speed restriction over the bridge until it dries out enough next week to get in and place some additional packing in to level the bridge back up. It’s really just routine maintenance and a result of some very very wet ground!

We’re extremely fortunate that these were our only issues out on the track, all very easily fixed.

Next week’s workdays will be a little all over the place, as there’s a few things that we need to tend to, so please check back Monday night for details of Tuesday.

They promised rain and this time they delivered. The following is a collection of shots from a patrol this afternoon and the water was still rising, especially around Castlemaine.

As most of the area (Maldon is basically cut off now) is now inaccessible by road, there won’t be a workday tomorrow as although we may have nice sun, we may find we just can’t get anywhere near a worksite.

It’s appears we’ve escaped any serious damage thankfully on the railway, but we’ll confirm that once the rain has stopped tomorrow. By all accounts the bridges have very fast but very free flowing water under them and absolutely no signs of movement.

Our thoughts are with the people who’s houses have flooded, especially around Castlemaine station, hopefully any damage is minimal.

Stay safe if you do need to be on the roads tomorrow and please remember to never enter flood waters.

A productive day today, in excellent weather, with several kms worth of sleeper plates inserted and largely tamped.

We’re probably down to the last km or so of this now.

While one team was off inserting plates, a small crew followed up drilling holes, with just under a km of that accomplished.

Ideally we’d be continuing with this on Thursday, however, the prediction is for severe rains (and these seem a little more likely than last Thursday’s predictions). So there won’t be workday planned for Thursday, however all going well, we will be working on Friday, but check back here Thursday night for details.