Today saw a very good start made on the West track in the loco shed. The sleepers and rails had been roughly dropped into place previously, leaving us with just a big kit of bits to assemble.

Cold… was slightly an understatement this morning! Reports varied but -3 degrees seemed a consensus. Normally on frosty mornings, a strategic place in the sun is an ideal work location.

Cleverly, we promptly moved straight into the freezing cold shed, where the mud on the rails dragged in the day before had infact frozen solid!

We recovered enough long rail from the Guildford Track to be able to do from the back of the shed to the front of the pit in a single rail, which made the job much easier.

To fasten the rails to the pit timbers, single shouldered sleeper plates and dog spikes were used. This is partly to get the track at the correct height and partly to get the rail can’t to match that of the concrete sleepers.

Normal double shoulder sleeper plates are wider, which could lead to catching clothing and arms when working in the pit, hence the use of these plates.

To get the rails straight, a highly scientific process of measuring from a string line running along the centre of the pit was used to get the first rail fixed centrally over the pit. Then simply gauging from that straight rail.

We’re pretty happy with how this came out, it looks pretty snazzy. We’ve used some fairly warn 94lb rail, transposed to use the unworn edge, which should be quite sufficient for the next century or two in the shed here.

Once the timber portion was complete, the work progressed towards the doors.

We called upon Rolf’s skills once again to peg out the required curve.

Some minor earthworks saw the ramp up to the doorway removed.

By close of play today another rail length has been loosely installed outside the shed doors, with only a few sleepers left to clip up

Tomorrow will see us cut and slew the current shed road, to align it with this new track, a slightly revised track design has been adopted since we installed that centre track last year. Thankfully with the magic of concrete, it won’t be too much hassle to do the changes.

Meeting at Castlemaine from 8.15am

Unfortunately a broken rail was the urgent job for today. Although on a bridge it was a very clean break and still very well supported and held to gauge, so we were able to crawl our works train (delivering the replacement rail) over.

In no time at all the replacement section had been installed and fastened down. Hopefully very very soon we’ll get stuck into re-railing which will greatly lower the chance of this event occurring, it’s a symptom of the old 60lb reaching the end of its useful life.

Once we got through to Castlemaine, our works train with rails for the loco shed were dropped off and the final touches were placed on the new turnout.

We even thought about installing the point lever… but that’s about as far as we got with that.

Thursday and Friday we’ll be at Castlemaine again, getting track built in the loco shed. A detailed turnout inspection on Monday also revealed a few little jobs to tend to around Castlemaine so we’ll try knock them over too. Meeting at Maldon 7.30am or Castlemaine from 8.15am.

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.