Excellent progress was made today on the 2nd turntable track.

We’ve bolted together all the rails as far as we had sleepers out and clipped up a significant portion.

Tomorrow we’ll move the gravel and other items preventing us going further, with Thursday hopefully getting us up to the pit, with this end of the job jacked and tamped up to the final height. Thursday – Meeting Maldon 7.30am or Castlemaine from 8.15am.

After a good solid day of preparation, we’re ready to continue laying the 2nd turntable road tomorrow.

Meeting Castlemaine from 8.15am

As with all things, some jobs get put on the back burner while major projects like Castlemaine and Bendigo Rd Lights are on the boil.

However today saw the odd job list reduced a little.

First adjustment of the down end turnout at Muckleford, it wasn’t quite throwing correctly and the locking was all out of adjustment, meaning was locking fine, but wouldn’t always unlock correctly.

Anyhow, an hour or and lots of blokes watching one bloke work and it was all fixed!

While the big digger was on hand, we had a crack at lining the dock road turnout at Muckleford. Since about 1996 it’s looked a bit like this, at an odd angle.

So we set about pushing and shoving until we’d achieved something more desirable.

Still a million and one wiggles that we could remove, but on the whole, it looks much more appropriate now. This work is beyond the little digger but this one just take it in its stride.

We then did a very through track patrol over the 60lb, to make sure our watch points from last inspection hadn’t degraded, with one exception, which is only a very minor issue, nothing has got significantly worse. However the timber sleepers are really starting to age during this wet year. This was also a planning exercise for the re-railing we’re hoping to start in a few weeks.

Last job of the day was to reinstate this speed sign, which we’d completely overlooked re-installing after the rail recovery effort.

Tuesday will likely be a works train, delivering more material to Castlemaine for the next little bit of work later in the week. Meeting Maldon 7.30am or Castlemaine from 8.15am (head straight to Castlemaine unless you need a lift from Maldon).

It’s a done deal, the lights and bells at Bendigo Road are fully installed and working!

After what seemed like a whole army of V/Line technicians descended on the site, suddenly lights were on posts, signs were erected and bells were ringing.

Just after lunch a call was put through asking for a test train, which of course was happily provided.

Initially a low speed run either way was undertaken to ascertain that everything functioned correctly, which of course it did.

This was then followed by a full line speed run of 40km/h, the track speed limit now in place here. Until today, we had restricted the speed of trains to 15km/h due to the dangerous nature of the umprotected crossing.

A view from the loco during the testing, one of the tests involved sitting in the approach sections to simulate a failed train, to ensure the lights responded correctly.

A big thank you to everyone who has been a part of this project, from politicians, government departments, V/ Line and our volunteers for all the many months of work that have gone in to making this a reality. We’re extremely grateful and much happier now that this isn’t such a high risk crossing, it’s a big win for everyone who uses it, road and rail.

Besides the fun and games of having the lights working, today’s gang did achieve a few things. One of which was removing all the old signage, which we’ll cascade to another crossing or keep as spares.

The all important job of removing the speed restriction signs was done with great enthusiasm.

As part of the welding in of the insulated joints some time back, we had a whole stack of short rails with fishplates attached, that needed recovering, which was successfully achieved today.

We had a good number of sleepers laid out at Maldon which still had dogspikes and plates attached, so these were removed and the sleepers were bundled and strapped for later use.

A lot of sorting and tidying of general stuff was also undertaken, helping to make use of the quiet moments between major activities.

Tomorrow, we’ll be meeting at Maldon from 8am. We’ll be doing a range of jobs, including a full track inspection prior to regular trains returning this weekend.