Although today’s weather was predicted to be wet, it was actually a nice day. Even without a gang, a bit was achieved.

The signalling boys gave us one of their old cabinets, that wasn’t fit for reuse, to store some stuff in. After a few incarnations, we’ve settled upon it being a services box.

We’ve fitted it up with air and water. Despite the power box affixed to its side, we haven’t run power over, as we really don’t have much need for power here.

We can now wash the ice off the windscreens on a cold morning (hopefully being in the cabinet will stop the water supply from freezing too). The air supply is to pump up the truck tyres, which inevitably need doing on a regular basis. Hopefully this will make life just that bit easier. We might even fit an external tap so you can give you hands a quick rinse.

Installing all that used up most of the morning. Once the area has dried up a bit, some nice gravel spread down will finish it off.

The afternoon was dedicated to a full track and bridges inspection following the heavy rain yesterday. No issues at all were noted, with all the track drains working very well. Even the bridges, despite having fair flows of water, aren’t impacted by debris. The most impressive flow was at Winters Flat, but Muckleford Creek had a fair flow also.

Tuesday gang will meet at Maldon from 8am, were we’ve got a range of activities to do around the Yard there.

Tomorrow, although not looking as wet, is still looking wet and given the job we need to do requires lineside access, we’ll cancel the workday, to prevent any unnecessary bogging.

We should be back to finer weather next week, with a more normal workload planned. Tuesday we’ll be meeting at Maldon at 8am, probably doing odd jobs around Maldon all day.

Firstly, apologies for the late Tuesday blog and secondly, given the weather tomorrow is looking very very wet, there will be no workday. Friday may end being cancelled too, check back here tomorrow night.

Anyhow, Tuesday was successful, with just under 1km worth of sleepers drilled and spikes started.

A procession of drillers followed by spikers kept making their way along the track.

Works had to be halted momentarily as a Driver Experience train passed through the worksite, quite rare for a train to be running on a trackwork day, so a nice change for the gang.

The crew just kept on moving up the hill, with the progress very impressive.

Another short break in the works as the train returned through in the afternoon.

We’d all had enough of that by mid afternoon, so rounded out the afternoon by stacking a couple of pallets of sleeper plates.

Check back here on Friday for details of works next week.

Yesterday’s small gang spent the day dropping out spikes along all the plates that were inserted on Thursday, ready for drilling and spike standing on Tuesday.

Following that, sleeper plates were dropped out all the way to Sawmill Road on one leg, ready for insertion late next week. This process is happening much quicker than first expected, it’s certainly not an exciting part of the job, but setting up and getting into a system that keeps moving along is quite efficient.

We’re focussing on just one leg at a time, as with the other leg unplated, we can still see where the old holes are, making drilling new holes much easier. So far it seems to be working well.

It’s also now obvious just how far we have rerailed, as everything is now involving a lot of walking!

Tuesday’s gang will meet at Maldon at 8am or out near Gas Pipeline from 8.30am.