Sorry, been bit slow on the blog entries this week. However that doesn’t mean we’ve been sitting idle.

Yesterday’s main task was tidying up the jewellery along the recently re-railed section, with the task of sorting etc…. taking most of the morning. While out there we also completed the anchoring of the curve, a nice job to have behind us with the weather warming up.

After lunch, a run out to the gas pipeline was made with the flail mower and chainsaw to reduce the rather overgrown shrubbery and small trees that have started close to the track in these good wet seasons.

We’re certainly not clearing all the foliage, but basically two flail mower strip’s to help ensure some fire break and help keep the side drains clear.

Today’s job focused on moving sleepers and rail out to Maclise St. However the opportunity of a loco at Muckleford and a flail mower at the ready, was too good to pass up.

So with the yard cleared we set about tidying up all the long grass, that’s now been a few years worth of growth. You can tell it’s going to be a fairly intense mowing season when things are getting quite overgrow in early October!

Once Muckleford had been tidied, a train load of sleepers and rail were discharged trackside at Maclise St level crossing ready for the rebuild there in a fortnight. While there a bit of re-arranging, tidying, weedspraying and housekeeping was undertaken, all in aid of making the job that little bit easier.

Next week will largely be focused on Maclise St. No formal workday on Monday, Tuesday will see another works train to transfer some rolling stock around the railway, while Wednesday, Thursday and Friday we’ll be busy at Maclise St.. check back the day prior for meeting times and places.

Unfortunately the weather wasn’t quite as kind today, but we did find enough time to get 12 concrete sleepers installed as well as jacking and tamping a few large dips in Curve 13.

Just off the end of the bridge was a significant hole, which is due to water holding, unfortunately this has been here from when the track was rebuilt in 2002, so no doubt we’ll be back again to correct this, at least it’s better than it was.

It’s been a very successful week and hopefully we can achieve a bit next week too.

Check back Monday for details of workdays next week.

Today was spent installing the last of the sleeper plates and dogging everything up.

It’s come up looking smart and hopefully once we’ve installed the 10 or so concrete sleepers required to replace the failed timber and cleaned up all the jewellery it’ll look very smart. Tomorrow will hopefully also see a bit of jacking and tamping to remove a few dips, bringing this up to a very high standard.

We did and accurately measure of just how much we’ve re-railed, with the up leg having 299m of 94lb installed and the Down leg having 325m installed, not a bad effort given we were expecting bad weather (which hasn’t yet arrived)

Meeting just up the bike track from Muckleford station around 8.15am tomorrow.

Another 300m (approx) of 94lb rail installed today, this time the other leg of yesterday’s section.

We flew through it, with the bulk of work finished just after lunch.

The 94/80/60 Junction section was cascaded down to the new rail junction location, all just so easy and convenient with the array of machines we have available now.

As the weather is looking poor for the next week (well pour in terms of trying to work in it) and we’ve got another big level crossing rebuild coming up very shortly, it’s unlikely we’ll achieve much more here in the short term, probably more in the tidying up and finishing off than ploughing ahead with more re-railing.

There will be workdays on Thursday and Friday, but check back Wednesday night for details as the weather may alter things a lot.