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.

Today was a very tidy up and order the place kinda of day, with trimming of grass around the station, a bit more weedspray and various other odd jobs like burning a bonfire and standing some bollards.

Thursday will be a bit of a social day, to help celebrate all our achievements in 2022, we’ll still be doing a bit of work around Maldon in the morning (from 8am) then we’ll run a special train to actually go out and experience all the trackwork we’ve done.

Today saw us run the last of our ballast trains for a while, primarily as we’re now out of ballast.

The main drop was on a section near Maldon which had little to no real ballast on it.

We also spent quite a bit of effort trying to get the last of the rock out of the wagons, which proved to be quite a challenge as it has set a little like concrete in the corners, but we’ve done fair well and hopefully as it dries out the last of it will fall.

It’s quite a good looking little train all told, and yes we are aware we forgot to put the tail disc up, although we spent as much time going backwards as forwards so we would’ve been wrong either way.

Tuesday we’ll be spending the day at Maldon attacking various tasks, we need to get on top of some vegetation there, it’s not too bad, but a tidy up is still needed. Meeting there from 8.30am.

We set aside today to get a head start on what is likely to be one of our grassiest years.

We focused on Bridges and Blackberries. Where possible before applying some herbicide, we’ve flail mowed the Blackberries. We had great success with this method last time, with many of our harder blackberry infestations now well dead.

The other reason for focusing around the bridges is to reduce the chance of damage from fire, as we’re sure you can appreciate, wooden bridges and fires don’t go well together, even small fires can lead to big damage. Where appropriate we’ve cut the grass before spraying.

All the bridges and crossings around Castlemaine were treated.

In between quiet moments of spraying, the flail mower has made a serious dent on the mowing task, still plenty to go but certainly far less onerous than it was before.

There will likely still be a second cut in most areas, however the spray we’ve applied to the weeds should mean we’re not trying to battle quite as thicker foliage in the next cut.

There’s still plenty of off track stuff to do, however today proved the ground is actually still very soft! So another week or two before we can tackle everything.

Tomorrow’s crew will jump back to ballast trains, we’ll meet at Maldon at 8am or out at Muckleford from 8.30am.