Another busy day, with a further 32 concrete sleepers installed and a thorough tamp of every sleeper under the new rails.

We’ll leave the speed restriction in place for the weekend to make sure the ramps up to the 80lb, near the digger in the picture above, hold up, given they’ve had a 50-60mm lift.

If they stay put we’ll return this section to the current line speed of 20mph next week. Once we’ve completed a long enough section we’ll lift the track speed back to our maximum line speed of 25mph.

Next week we’re planning on being in Castlemaine Yard, but check back closer to the dates as things could change with Covid.

It was just one big day of driving spikes!

All of the recently re-railed section, had spike holes drilled and spikes driven today, which was a lot of drilling, spiking and walking.

We started near Brown Street, working down hill to Winters Flat.

We had at least two drills on the go, sometimes three, the power pack unit, which proved very effective, and a couple of standard hand drills. It’s a lot of holes and in this not new timber it certainly saw us go through a few augers.

Following that was a parade of spike droppers, spike standers and spike starters.

This allowed the spike driver to have a clear run to chase along behind.

By day’s end every spike was in and driven home, with only a few failed timber now remaining to be changed tomorrow for concrete.

A final tamp to ensure everything is supporting the rail adequately will happen over the next week or so, which will allow us to remove the temporary speed restriction.

Tomorrow we’ll again be meeting at Brown St Ped Crossing, around 8.15am.

On what can only be described as one of the most exhilarating days we’ve had in a long time…. we spent the whole day distributing and then installing sleeper plates. Quite literally thousands of the things!

Without having to head back to the Muckleford stockpiles, we had exactly 3 plates left over from the various collections we had nearby, pretty good luck really.

All of the recently re-railed track now has sleeper plates, with a good portion of the first curve now drilled, with a few dog spikes stood ready for Thursday.

Meeting Maldon 7.45am or Brown Street Ped Crossing from 8.15am on Thursday.

27 failed timber sleepers were replaced with concrete today. There’s around that again to do in the section re-railed this week before we go through and fasten all the timber down.

This was the little digger’s first proper go on this re-railing job, with everything up to now being the domain of the big fella.

These replacements are having the effect of bringing the number of concrete sleepers up to better than an average of 1 in 3, with quite a few 1 in 2 concretes now in the track.

We’ve even put up the speed restriction boards, just visible right at the end of the bridge.

Lots of tamping took place this afternoon, with all the new sleepers packed, any significant dips corrected and any timber sleepers not supporting the rail squeezed up to offer some load bearing.

Next week we’ll be back here, replacing the remaining sleepers, installing sleeper plates and starting to fasten them down. Meeting on Tuesday, Maldon at 7.45am or from 8.30am near Brown St. Pedestrian Xing.