As promised, further progress has been made, despite the wet afternoon.

We’ve re-railed the low leg over Pyrenees Hwy, which given all the harness and anchoring gear used to do it safely, was much slower than regular re-railing, however we still managed it in good time.

Here John and Will are looking very pleased as they survey the morning’s work. We’ve got some nifty gadgets that secure onto the head of the rail, to which the harness is anchored to.

We’ve installed a single 55m rail over the bridge, removing all joints on the bridge, which will be a massive bonus in years to come, not just for the sake of the bridge but for future joint maintenance.

We’ve got another 55m rail on site to do the other leg at some stage, at the moment that’s not a seriously high priority, given it’s already 80lb, but once we’ve completed the rest of the track we’ll come back to it.

We did slightly better than just the bridge, also installing another 41m of rail.

Tomorrow should see us complete to the end of the curve. Meeting around Brown Street Pedestrian xing around 8.15am. (Or Maldon at 7.45am)

Another extremely successful day today, with an additional 398m of 80lb rail installed, comfortably.

We did a fair effort first up to in regards to unfastening, however before too long that proved too conservative, as we had reached our end goal before lunch time. So we set to and had one crew unfastening ahead, one changing over and bolting up the rails and one behind clipping up, interestingly we were all keeping pace with each other!

It’s amazing just what a difference it has made to the appearance of the track. A lot of the dips and wiggles have disappeared and after a quick run through with the tamper, it’ll be like new track.

The 398m achieved today saw the UP leg re-railed from the down end of curve 5 (the curve on the Maldon side of Winters Flat Bridge) all the way to Pyrenees Hwy Bridge, where we’ve even cut a temporary Junction back to the 60lb to help us out in getting diggers and trolleys across tomorrow.

You would think all that was enough for one day, but no, we also fastened up 18 timber sleepers at the end of Winters Flat Bridge, straightened two severe cripples in the rail (we’ve discovered that using the Buda it’s really easy to do once in the track while it’s only clipped up 1 in 3) and planned the rest of the week’s work.

We’ll be out in force again tomorrow, as there won’t be any trains, due to the covid situation. So we should make even more excellent progress. Meeting around Pyrenees Hwy Bridge at 8am (ish).

Well on the first day of intensive re-railing, we’ve installed and bolted in 255m of 80lb rail, replacing old 60lb.

We stuffed around a bit, working out what the best processes/methods were but we’re still extremely happy and surprised by our efforts!

So today we remove all the fastening from the 60lb, swapped the rails over and we’ve clipped up the new rail at every concrete sleepers. The big digger proved very good at this task.

We’re yet to come back and fasten up the timber, but as the gauge is now held extremely well and everything is supporting the rail, if this doesn’t happen for a few weeks, it won’t be problem at all.

We’ll also do a thorough sleeper replacement before we do any spiking up, replacing any failed timber with concrete.

Now our process is in place, tomorrow should see at least 300m of rail installed, probably more as today saw lots of stuffing around to get ramps to the old 60lb and cutting closures to join the existing 80lb.

So far this method of re-railing is completely outstripping any previous method, as with just 4 people today, everything was achieved without silly amounts of effort or strain, which should be even easier tomorrow.

Meeting near Winters Flat Bridge from 8.15am or Maldon at 7.30am.

Well, we achieved our goal in a very timely manner today, with the track up to the current compound gates completed, and now in use. It’ll be used as storage for some time until we get around to completing the pit and in turn connecting the track up to the turntable.

Shortly the compound gates will be moved, enabling all these items to be stored under lock and key hopefully reducing the graffiti attacks.

But as we had finished that well before lunch, we came up with a cunning plan to capitalise on the lockdown….

With no trains running for another week (at least), we’ve set about unfastening the old 60lb rail on the Down Side of Winters Flat Bridge, ready to start re-railing with the 80lb that’s been sitting there for over 6 months just begging to be put to use.

We’ve pulled most of the fastenings, removed anchors and planned our works for the next week.

We’ll be running workdays everyday next week. With Monday starting at Maldon at 7.30, then at Castlemaine Yard around 8.15am to load up a bit of gear before getting out to site ( Winters Flat Bridge) around 8.30am to start work. Keep an eye on the blog for details of start times and locations, but it’ll generally be 8.30 around Winters Flat.