Not a lot in the way of pictures to show for today, but very successful.

We did run into some trouble with a couple of the wagons, one had doors which didn’t always want to close, good fun when you’re trying to be precise! And another that just didn’t work at all.

However some trackside mechanical repairs and we’d emptied one wagon and exchanged parts with the failed one to get it up and running like a new one.

All in all it went very well.

Most of the afternoon was spent trying to remove the last of the well stuck rock from inside the wagons, unlike the small wagons you can’t just lean over the edge and give the rock a poke, we found that a variety of speeds, up and down hills breaking and accelerating was the best method to free the stuck rock, hence the push pull train seen here.

It was very successful few days and we’re extremely grateful to Bendigo Rail Workshops, SSR, V/Line and ONRSR for allowing this movement to occur – a massive boost for our little railway.

Next week’s workdays will be announced Monday afternoon, once we’ve safely got these wagons back on the mainline and onwards to Bendigo.

Well… you can’t have everything go right all the time. A flat tyre gave us grief, nicely followed by a flat battery! Thankfully we got those out of the way early on.

Then it was onto cross boring a turnout in Castlemaine Yard. The issue really being the timbers are still adequate, aging but adequate, however the dog screws that we’re used had bent over, leading to widening of gauge. So they were whipped out and good dog spikes installed in there place and just like that the gauge issue was resolved.

We also did an extensive lift of the creek side rail through the turnout and beyond to correct a bit of embankment settlement, even after 100+ years, we still get some settling of the formation.

We even turned a Y class… just to help even up the wear and make the next job a little easier.

And the next job involved this lot, which appeared on Platform 2, a little after lunch.

A rake of ballast wagons arrived, onto our track! The owner of the wagons inherited them loaded, which wasn’t ideal given they needed some maintenance before heading out on their next major assignment, so between SSR, Bendigo Rail Workshops and us, we devised a method of emptying the wagons that was beneficial to all parties.

It was very much a drop and run job, once the wagons were on VGR metals, SSR’s train (just locos by now) were back out onto the mainline, heading to Melbourne.

So we moved them well clear of the platform to complete all of our checks.

One of these tests being to ascertain the exact weight of the wagons, as short of being an psychic, it can be very hard to guess the actual load.

We use a hydraulic cylinder, with a gauge, which we tested on several know weights prior (the Y classes and known carriages etc…). This led us to believe very satisfactorily the wagons weren’t overloaded, which is always a good thing. However it did confirm they were too heavy to go over Pyrenees HWY Bridge, so as planned we were going to have to drop rock before Pyrenees hwy bridge, to reduce the weight.

So that’s exactly what we did! We infact did it before Winters Flat Bridge to really play it safe, although we had our Track and Bridge engineer on hand to ensure we did the right thing.

The wagons are fully pneumatic, meaning there aren’t any horrid wheels to control and they even provide a purpose build control platform!

Those little levers are all that’s needed to open and close the doors, pure heaven!

We only did side discharging, as this is a feature our wagons don’t have and something which can be quite tricky to achieve well, especially on curves.

The shape of the wagons certainly makes sure everything falls out!

It did take a bit of practice to get good at controlling the flow, but it is certainly the only way to go!

We’ve put enough on to replenish that lost when we completed the 2 inch lift to install the concretes and once we’ve completed the re-railing, we’ll no doubt wish to drop a bit more, but this is massive bonus.

So far we’ve only discharged the first 5 wagons, with 4 still to go tomorrow.

Any extra hands would be greatly appreciated, as each wagon needs two operators and its much more efficient to not have to stop after each load to move to the next wagon.

Meeting Castlemaine at 8.15 for an 8.30 departure tomorrow morning.

Today was a ballast and tamp day.

The ballast train was cautiously pushed back over the new track, ready for the rock drop. Once again the first rail vehicle over the new track was Daylesford’s ballast plough!

After a good 1.5 wagon loads of rock was dropped out and a good few hours of jacking and tamping, it came up looking more like a mainline than a siding!

The very norther end of the loco shed track never quite got ballasted and tamped previously, so to do that, we dragged out the carriage currently living in there during its refurbishment, Acheron. What better place to store it than on our new section of track! No pics of the work inside the shed unfortunately, but it’s all done now.

At days end, we’d completed all we’d set out to do, which was no small amount of work! This section of track can now be filled up to reform the roadway,

Check back Wednesday night for details of Thursday.

Today’s small gang of 3 had a very successful day.

Lots of marking out first up, using the offset pegs to provide the track location and sleeper spacings made it very easy.

In no time at all it was sleepers dropped out and rails sitting upon them. The rails used here are those recovered from the recent Maclise St. Rebuild.

The rails recovered from Bendigo Rd crossing were the next lot installed on the end of these and the workshop track itself was laid with the rails from Rowe St Crossing. Unfortunately we haven’t got any more 94lb crossings left to rebuild so we’ll have to delve into our stores of 94lb for the bit between the shed and here. We’ve got a few lesser quality lengths, still perfect siding rail but not mainline quality, that we’ll use up in here.

We bolted up as we went, which was quite easy with these nice long bits of rail.

By lunch time we’d laid out 70 odd sleepers and about 60m of rail in each leg.

The beauty with a nice flat roadbed and concrete sleepers is the gauge is held well enough to allow the digger across, which is ideal to help distribute all the jewellery and tweak the sleepers before clipping up. The clearance is relatively tight around here, the bollard will be moved to improve that, but it’s actually no tighter than between any of the tracks and the shed doors. However for curve off the turnout does look good!

By the end of the day we’d clipped up one leg to just this side of the digger, with most of the jewellery dropped out ready for tomorrow’s crew to finish it off.

We’ll be meeting here at 8.30am tomorrow, hopefully completing all the clipping up and finalising the turnout work, ready for ballasting and tamping on Monday.