We had a very successful, but pictureless, day today.

Fuelling all the vehicles and loading the last of the items that’ll be needed for Thursday and Friday, before we headed our on site to remove the signal cable and pull through a draw wire under the road, tamp up a few little dips nearby and get all the sleepers stockpiled nearby ready for use.

We’ve prepared as much as we now can without actually pulling up track, so much so that after lunch we even moved onto other tasks, such as replacing 4 failed timber sleepers nearby and dragging the last of the long lengths of 94lb rail from Muckleford Yard across the crossing, meaning any damage caused will only be there another day (the damage to the asphalt was only a minor mark however!)

It’s shaping up to be a fairly straight forward task on Thursday, a small group of us will be meeting at Maldon at 7am on Thursday, with everyone else meeting on site at Muckleford from 7.30am, ready for a 7.40ish start. Parking will be in the fenced area of Muckleford Yard, well off the access road, as we’ll have quite a few trucks and diggers running up and down there as the day goes on.

We spent today preparing for the Walmer Road Level Crossing Rebuild, with most of the materials required transported to site.

We’ve even undertaken most of the preparations, including cutting rails where joints will be required and drilling holes to prepare the new island rails.

It’s all shaping up to be a nice straight forward job next week.

This afternoon we erected some semi permanent speed signs near Sawmill Rd (and updated one near Muckleford) to reflect the rise of track speed back to 25mph over the section we’ve just rerailed.

And while all that was happening, we had the flail mower hard at work tidying up the remaining long grass around Maldon.

It’s been a successful week! Next week will be all systems go to rebuild the crossing, Tuesday will be getting all the remaining materials and gear to site, meeting Maldon from 8am

Once a year, we like to do something to help say thankyou to our hard working volunteers, typically we run some sort of special works, this year’s event ended up being today, due to other commitments, and it looked a like a small passenger train.

We did start the day with just a hint of work, where we got Bruce into the telehandler to unload a pallet.

We did a couple of return trips from Maldon to Castlemaine, enjoying the luxuriousness of carriage Tambo, and yes all the crew specially washed their work clothes to make sure we didn’t leave any dirt behind.

The first was a very simple single loco and two pass cars affair, however after lunch we decided that was a bit soft… and surely we needed a little more horsepower… so the T class and Y157 (fresh from a bogie swap), were added to the front.

It was actually just a really good excuse for the workshops to test their recent hard work and tune ups on both locos in a no-pressure setting as they’re going through the recommissioning process for both.

We did ditch the T class at Muckleford, for a slightly quicker trip over the 60lb to Castlemaine (we’ve restricted the T to 10mph over the 60lb, given its higher axle load).

Our, probably still overpowered train at Castlemaine.

The day included many nice festivities, including some marvellous sausage rolls and chocolate cake from Mrs Mal and this decorated cake from Will and his Mum – thankyou!

At day’s end, Bruce even charged at the opportunity to vacuum Tambo, as we always like to leave things at least as clean as we found them.

Tomorrow’s gang won’t quite be the same level of festivity, as we’ve got a few things to do around Maldon first up, so we’ll meet there from 8am.

Once a year, we like to do something to help say thankyou to our hard working volunteers, typically we run some sort of special works, this year’s event ended up being today, due to other commitments, and it looked a like a small passenger train.

We did start the day with just a hint of work, where we got Bruce into the telehandler to unload a pallet.

We did a couple of return trips from Maldon to Castlemaine, enjoying the luxuriousness of carriage Tambo, and yes all the crew specially washed their work clothes to make sure we didn’t leave any dirt behind.

The first was a very simple single loco and two pass cars affair, however after lunch we decided that was a bit soft… and surely we needed a little more horsepower… so the T class and Y157 (fresh from a bogie swap), were added to the front.

It was actually just a really good excuse for the workshops to test their recent hard work and tune ups on both locos in a no-pressure setting as they’re going through the recommissioning process for both.

We did ditch the T class at Muckleford, for a slightly quicker trip over the 60lb to Castlemaine (we’ve restricted the T to 10mph over the 60lb, given its higher axle load).

Our, probably still overpowered train at Castlemaine.

The day included many nice festivities, including some marvellous sausage rolls and chocolate cake from Mrs Mal and this decorated cake from Will and his Mum – thankyou!

At day’s end, Bruce even charged at the opportunity to vacuum Tambo, as we always like to leave things at least as clean as we found them.

Tomorrow’s gang won’t quite be the same level of festivity, as we’ve got a few things to do around Maldon first up, so we’ll meet there from 8am.