Another big day today, with the final 75 sleepers installed (following on from yesterday’s 75).

Lots of clipping up as we went.

The gang is very much back into the stride of this task now, pretty much keeping pace with the digger doing the insertions.

We spent a considerable amount of time jacking and packing the dips. It was pretty lumpy through here before we did the work, so this has resulted in a very significant improvement.

For the 2025 Year To date – we’ve installed 1,009 Concrete Sleepers, 851 of those have been in this recent effort from Pipeline Crossing – the others around Castlemaine.

There’s approximately 2000 concrete sleepers required to complete the section Pipeline Xing to Donkey Farm Trk Xing – so by the end of next week, we’re pretty confident we’ll have reached the halfway mark.

Our overall concrete sleeper count Castlemaine to Maldon is now 13,070 – assuming our running line has 23,000 sleepers (we haven’t actually counted every one of them…. but it’s a good estimate) we’re now well over having half of our entire sleepers being concrete.

We’ve updated the Progress Map to show the progress to today (1st May 2025) with the link here:

The afternoon was spent on completely different tasks, including fixing up a few issues on the platform at Muckleford.

A series of minor holes had developed behind the now quite old coping timbers – they’re due for replacement later this year, however to tide us over some strategic placement of rocks and roadbase, followed by a good scrape has seen it improved. The gang even found the energy to remove the larger weeds from the platform at the down end.

While in Rome…. it’s always important when an opportunity arises to fully test the apparatus, the chance was also taken to slacken off the signal wires slightly now that the cold weather is approaching – it’s quite surprising how much the signal wire is effected by temperature and a seasonal check is always advisable.

The final task for the day was far from glorious, but no less important. The removal of a dead kangaroo from the track. It’s not at all common to come across kangaroos on the track, however this particular roo wasn’t too wise to a train at some point recently – the use of an excavator at a good reach with all the windows closed is a very good thing in this situation.

Next week’s gang will continue with the resleepering effort, meeting Monday morning 8am at Maldon or on site from 8.30am.

After our short break after Easter, we’re back into resleepering.

This week’s aim is 300 sleepers. Around 130 are in so far – the slow bit, so it should be a comfortable effort to knock it over this week.

Monday’s crew did all the spike pulling and most of the E clip sleeper inserting, with today’s crew getting in the remainder of the E clips and most of the first pass intermediate fastclips.

This gets us a very good way around the curve, another week or two and we’ll be most certainly on the straight towards Donkey Farm Trk.

Tomorrow’s crew, will meet at Maldon at 8am before heading out to site, around 8.30am. Hopefully getting the last of the 1 in 2 inserted and clipped up.

Monday and yesterday saw a very intense few days of sleeper preparation, in the pic above there was a very very large pile of concrete sleepers, however they’re all now distributed lineside, ready for installation.

We’ve even continued the sleeper marking all the way to the end of the long curve, from where Donkey Farm Track can be just seen in the distance!

Today’s crew is out there continuing on with a bit more of this preparation.

Given the Easter long weekend and a good number of our gang are heading away, we won’t have a workday tomorrow or any day next week – we’ll have a little break and be ready to hit the ground running on Monday 26th April, 8am at Maldon.

The weekend just gone saw some very exciting activities, as DRA (Disaster Recovery Australia) held the second of their very successful weekend work programs at the VGR.

They had two teams of six volunteers being trained in basic tree felling, and chainsaw crosscutting and clearing, working in the Muckleford  to Sawmill rd section. The focus is on removing trees that are dead, dangerous, too close to the rails, and those impacting safety sightlines.
Next DRA weekend work party will be on 17/18 May which will be a larger operational exercise.

Thankyou to DRA for helping us out while building their essential skills for disaster recovery!

Another successful day, yesterday’s small crew managed to get a big head start on the job, which enabled us to get another 124 sleepers installed today.

Lots of pics follow, all pretty usual stuff so not too much commentary.

We’re just about around to the next stockpile, which means we’re about 1/4 of the way towards Donkey Farm Trk.

We did so well sleeper inserting, we had the afternoon free to tidy up – we’ve now used up all the sleepers we’ve distributed beside the track, so unfortunately before we can do any more, we need to drop out many more.

We’ve got quite a system in place now, being a bit further from Maldon, running e everything back with a digger is a bit impractical, so the trusty truck is getting some use.

One of our long running faults has been the headwalls on this little box culvert. Until we replaced the sleepers, there was little point replacing them.

Another couple of droppers and these should last the life of this culvert now hopefully – the culvert is really a little undersized but it’s only a very small issue on rare occasions so next time the timber needs renewal, we’ll build a slightly bigger one.

It’s been a busy week, a total of 232 sleepers installed, given our slightly different arrangements this year and only having a 4 day work week, rather than 5, we’re extremely happy with the progress.

Monday’s crew will be on the exciting job of preparing and dropping out sleepers, meeting at Maldon 8am or on site from 8.30am.