Today was an action-packed day of tamping the recent sleeper insertions and a few other minor defects – we did a bit of this yesterday too, especially around the depot at Castlemaine.

We did a few other odd jobs while out and about like re-covering the diodes at the end of the flashing light sections.

After the tamping work came a good thorough ballast scrape to tidy things up, which it has certainly done.

We then continued on with our tamping endeavours, correcting various minor dips and twists, all of which seemed to be in awkward locations – which is probably why they existed as its also a little challenging to successfully squeeze these up without pulling all the signalling gear away, but, we managed and didn’t cause any issues.

We then moved on to a quite long bit of settlement by Winters Flat, it’s happened before and no doubt will again, it’s just the nature of certain embankments – probably a result of the relatively so so fill available back during original construction in 1883/1884.

The truck was very successfully bogged and then just as easily extracted – it wouldn’t be winter without a bogging – we think this was the first of the year.

We had one little bit of finish off by Pipeline Crossing – we’d been waiting for the clipping up to address this, and now that’s all complete, we thought it best to tick it off the list while we were passing.

While waiting for the little digger to make its way home, we unloaded the equipment we’ve been using over the past few weeks, ready for next week’s adventures – which are yet to be firmly locked in so watch this space.

We’ve had a good run so far in August, with a good few bits and pieces ticked off.

We’ve got a fair amount of work coming up in the Muckleford area over the coming months, so that’ll likely become a bit of a focus.

Unfortunately no pics from today, however the remaining 20 sleepers were installed between the crossing in Castlemaine today, all clipped up, with old timber tidied up and transported away.

We’ve even made a solid start at tamping them up and removing a number of other small defects in the area – a task we’ll continue over the next few days.

Tomorrow, we’ll meet at Castlemaine Depot from 8am – although if it’s frosty like it was today, it’ll take until 8.30 to get things warmed up. We’ll focus on a number of small track issues in the depot first up.

Today, we set about beginning a few spot replacements between Maclise and Rowe Street Crossings.

The day began with tree trimming down beside the loco shed at Castlemaine, while the telehandler was at there. Much tidied now.

We’ve aimed for a 1 in 4 type pattern to avoid getting any clusters – nothing here is quite at the critical condition yet, however doing this now will more or less remove the chance of failure due to track gauge widening if a group of sleepers do rapidly worsen.

It was a bit of a change of pace doing spot replacements rather than everything, however, it all came back to us.

In due course, we do intend to replace all sleepers in the curve with Concrete – however, we’ll likely use full profile sleepers and do it in the 100% style to correct the rather irregular sleeper spacings. That’ll be a few years away once the more urgent areas have been addressed.

We installed and clipped up 55 sleepers today, with only about 30 to go to reach Rowe Street (we’ve already replaced a good number of timber with concrete around there).

Monday’s crew will meet at Maldon before heading out, as we’ll need both trucks on hand.

Today, we took just about the whole civil fleet through to Castlemaine.

The purpose, amongst other things, was to attempt to correct an issue on Signal Post 10 – with one of the disc signals failing to operate. We had expected we might have needed a different lift machine to get close enough, however the telehander and cage proved ideal for the situation.

This image from below shows why the use of the ladder was out of the question… the timber is so rotten up there that the deck doesn’t exist. We’ve come to the conclusion that this deck is extremely old – quite possibly original – circa 1914 however it could have been renewed in the 50s but based on the lack of paint and inability to replace it due to a fairly major design flaw (if you remove the deck you haven’t got anything to stand on) it’s certainly not recent.

The issue was with one of these square rods – these rotate to translate the movement of the wire and other rods across to the correct location to operate the signal – it’s simple and works well… but only if the rod does rotate – for reasons that still aren’t too apparent that stopped happening – likely a lack of lube, which is hard to do given its underneath the deck.

Some relatively interesting observations were made when up there – the signal hasn’t been repainted since it was erected – or at least heavily modified – the rods are each labelled and written on – including the words Castlemaine Post 10 – which is most likely from when these parts were being prepared in the stores or depot – and given there’s bits behind other bits that you couldn’t access with having it dissembled – it’s safe to say it’s been a very long time since its last full repaint – we’re guessing bits have been touched up at times – but probably only the easy to access bits.

It’s a nice view from up there.

In a nutshell, however, once we’d removed and straightened the long rod, unstuck the square rod and given everything a good lube, it all now operates perfectly. Another win for the telehander.

We will, in due course, replace the deck on this signal – however, it’s not overly simple, so we’ll plan that one in a bit more depth.

The afternoon was spent sorting out some rubbish in one of the wagons and a start was made on cleaning out the big red shed’s gutters – which had the rain not beaten us, would have been completed.

Tomorrow we’ll start at Maldon at 8am but we’ll be working at Castlemaine, starting there around 8.45am.