A few more preparations at Bendigo Road today, with the last of the lokspikes installed, junction rails dragged into place etc…

It’s all starting to take shape, hopefully next week we’ll be in a position to not only rebuild the crossing, but complete the installation of these junction rails, or maybe that’s being a little over-optimistic, hopefully we can though.

A rogue limb from the large gum tree on Maldon Station came down some time last night. Believe it or not, the limb missed the station sign, bench seat, fence, lamp and garden bed plants! The big digger promptly grabbed the limb and placed it aside before it could fall any further. We’ll get an Arborist in next week to check this tree out as this is the biggest but certainly not the first limb to fall and we probably won’t be so lucky next time!

Next week we’ll be all systems go at Bendigo Road. Tuesday well meet at Maldon at 8am, then onto the crossing where we will do the final touches and begin any works that we can to speed up Thursday and Friday.

Today saw most of the material for the upcoming crossing re-build delivered to site. First off a train load of concrete sleepers were taken out from Maldon, having been collected from Muckleford the day before.

Once there the big digger was put to work unloading.

There’s far more sleepers here than we need for the crossing job, however they’ll be needed nearby sooner or later.

A quick run through to Muckleford to collect the rails followed. 4 X 80/94lb junction rails and 2 X 94lb rails were loaded up.

It seemed a very small rail train compared to late last year’s trains.

These were dropped off near the crossing.

Now that we knew the exact rail lengths we are using, we set about measuring the locations we’ll need to cut and join rail, to ensure no issues. We’ll end up with 94lb through the crossing, with long junction rails on either end to get us back to the 80lb.

To facilitate this, we’ve installed lokspikes, ready to use pandrol adaptor’s so we can change out the current rail and install the long junction rails.

All the colours, lines and markings have some meaning…. generally something extremely trivial, but it gives the impression of a very detailed and thorough system.

We even managed to find time to stop using some of the gear long enough so Bazz could attend to a few issues.

Tomorrow we’ll drive in the lokspikes on the Up side of the crossing, before we begin work on aligning the track approaching the crossing, as besides the crossing itself currently being quite misaligned, the approach tracks also don’t really resemble a straight line, so well get them sitting closer to the mark to save a bit of work on rebuild week.

Meeting Maldon 8am or on site shortly after.

Well, it’s not quite the prettiest thing yet, but it is quite usable as a length of track to access the carriage shed.

By mid morning the gang had clipped up the rest of the concrete sleepers and ballast begun to be applied.

Just after lunch, with a layer of ballast, a good tamp and the removal of any track twist and severe dips/ bumps, a test engine was run over the siding to ensure we had achieved sufficient compaction of the dry gravel ballast we had available – worked perfectly.

The first vehicles to grace 5 siding, as the gang sat in the shade admiring their efforts.

5 siding was even used for a shunting maneuver, immediatly following the ballast being scraped into a rough profile. The J class coupled up the Y stabled in 5 siding and headed off to Maldon from there.

It’s a very nice feeling to see all the hard work undertaken over the past few weeks actually being put to use.

We’re not finished here just yet, 5 siding still needs more ballast applied, a good lift and final tamp before we deem it complete. However it is now available to traffic to allow rolling stock to be stored securely in the west road of the Carriage Shed.

Tuesday will be a workday catching up on preparation for Bendigo Road Crossing, meeting Maldon at 8am.

While mainly focussing on other odd jobs around Castlemaine, we did manage to finish up clipping one leg of 5 siding.

It’s getting just far enough away from the longest day that we can now get sufficient shade from the buildings all day, which today’s large gang made good use of.

It’s ideal weather to be out and about in too, so please join us tomorrow, once again at Castlemaine, where we can hopefully complete 5 siding. Meeting Castlemaine from 8.15am.