A big day today, with Castlemaine Turntable once again connected to the network.

The final rails were cut to length and everything fastened up. Rolf marked oit the curve and only very minor tweaking was needed to form a very nice approach to the turntable.

Loco’s will once again be able to turn on the turntable from tomorrow, albeit at walking pace over this section of track until its ballasted and tamped.

In other news, Muckleford has become a hive of activity over the past week, with close to 4000 tonnes of ballast having been delivered.

What started as a small pile, quickly grew to a mountain!

We’re the extremely fortunate recipients of this ballast that has been disposed of by VLine from works through Elphinstone Tunnel and nearby areas.

Many many thanks go to Ecologiq and Vline’s project and environmental teams for making this happening. Also thankyou to our local member Maree Edwards, RDV Bendigo, EPA and Victrack SCB team for all their support in getting this valuable resource diverted to us.

As part of the process, all the ballast has been through a screen, where contaminated fines and oversize lumps of rubbish are removed, leaving us with close to brand new ballast to use on the upgrading of our track.

The pile of rock is nothing short of impressive and we do count ourselves very fortunate that it has been made available to us.

We’re only one of several tourist and heritage railways around Victoria, all of which have similar needs and like us often have very limited finances and resources.

We’re hoping this project might help pave the way for not only our Railway, but all the other similar railways to have opportunities to recover such materials (ballast, rail, sleepers etc…) and help reuse and recycle these materials which are otherwise often considered waste.

Next week, all going well, will see more work at Castlemaine, with a start being made on installing track in the loco shed West road. Check back Monday for details of Tuesday.

Another busy day at Castlemaine, with more works on the turnout and turntable approach track.

We began with some housekeeping of items stored perfectly in the wrong spot.

Before long it was out with the remainder of the old track and tidying up of the roadbed.

Instead of using the 2 closure rails to make the curved lead we replaced it with a single length of welded rail, mainly because the 2 separate rails were a bit short, possibly a mix up of rails during one of the many moves they’ve had or we’ve made a slight error in the setout phase, either way everything else fits perfectly, so we’re not too worried.

Once in place the off sets from the straight stock rail were marked up and the curve jacked into the correct position.

We’re very happy with how the curve turned out, it’s always a sign of a nice turnout, when everything looks even and uniform.

While fastening down of both curved legs was happening, sleepers and rails were placed very roughly in position towards the turntable.

Rolf will be on hand tomorrow with the survey gear to make sure we get a good curve from the turnout up to the table.

We’re very happy with the progress so far, hopefully tomorrow will see us connected up to the turntable once again, however the weather may have other ideas.

Meeting Castlemaine Yard from 8am tomorrow.

After a slow start due to a few truck troubles, we did make good progress on the new turnout.

We’ve fastened up the straight legs and v crossing, made a start on the curved lead and developed an action plan to get the turntable accessible by late this week or early next week.

It’s all starting to take shape now, with not a great deal required to get it trafficable.

We’ll be back here on Thursday, meeting on site near the turntable from 8.15am.

Between showers, today saw us practise our turnout building skills.

Before too long we had the straight stock bolted up and a string line run to work from.

We did extremely well today, with both half sets (the bit with the point blades) and almost the full length of the straight leg fastened down. We’ve assembled the straight closures and begun fastening it down, but the rain got the better of us.

In a moment that the rain was showing a bit too much interest, we escaped to the loco shed, laying out the sleepers along the west track ready for dropping in rails in the coming weeks.

Tuesday will see us back here, completing more of the turnout. Meeting Maldon 8am or Castlemaine from 8.30am.