It was an eventful week, beginning with maintenance on the little grabs, replacing the wear plates – the hardest part was getting the old plates off!

Later in the week saw 50 concrete sleepers inserted into Curve 13 – just on the up side of Muckleford. This little section missed out on the 1 in 3 treatment for reasons we now can’t remember, but it has effectively had this now so we can rest fairly assured it’ll hold gauge excellently.

Another bonfire at Muckleford was taken care of ahead of the fire season. The date for this starting hasn’t been announced yet, but there have been whispers it’ll be soon.

Late in the week, work has begun on fixing up an old Derrick Crane. This one isn’t original and came from a stonemason many years ago. However, it was probably ex railways before that.

Maldon had a Derek up until the early 1970s, with this classic shot from Neville Gee (26/11/1969) which was chosen as the Front Cover on the Train Hobby Publications “Country Branch Lines Victoria – Part 7” showing the Maldon Crane in all its glory.

The Crane under repair is probably destined for Muckleford as its a lot smaller than the original Maldon one, however it’ll be a good test for ‘how to’ for when we do do the Maldon one. This project is being funded by a couple of donors and we could always use any extra assistance in this area as things are relatively costly.

We won’t be going for usable, rather an aesthetically pleasing addition to the areas.

Anyhow, this week the focus will be back on sleepers in the Muckleford area, Monday will likely be a little different / more preparation like, as we do have a train running but from Tuesday onwards we’ll be into it! Meeting each day at Maldon from 8am.

We’ve had a productive week so far, although most of it has been taken up with digger maintenance.

As a result of lots of people being away this week, there won’t be a workday tomorrow. However, Monday will be a workday, meeting at Maldon at 8am.

Sorry about the lack of updates this past week, it’s been busy!

The week was highly successful with another 150 concretes installed, this took us all the way to the start of the curve.

It’s very hard to tell in these pics, but we have now been through all the stacks of sleepers in the area and dropped out towards the Bridge, ready to continue on.

We had a test run of T395/Y157 pass through the worksite on Thursday, which we piggy backed onto to make a civil transfer.

The next couple of weeks will be a bit quieter, as we’ve got quite a few away, however we do have a large number of bonfires that will need tackling prior to the fire season beginning so we’ll be getting onto those.

Tomorrow’s crew will meet at Maldon at 8am.

We ended up having a very productive week on the concrete sleepers front, with 262 sleepers installed.

We’ve used some low profiles near the crossing as it’ll likely be the last thing we relay in concrete given how recently it was renewed (2017) and the ramping is much easier with these.

Everything was going very well… until it wasn’t!

The little digger developed an issue in a very awkward location, so a bit of bush mechanics later… it’s now more accessible but also more vulnerable, but inside an hour, we were back in action.

The big digger did substitute for a while, however it’s strengths don’t lie in the delicate work, but it kept us going.

Once back in action, the little one was back in full swing, we’ve even perfected the clipping up fadtclips using the grabs, so we’re quite happy about that, saves lots of backbreaking effort.

The well wagons were cleared of their loading and debris and reloaded with reclaimed timber sleepers from the week.

Tamping and cleaning followed, with the end resulting looking quite respectable.

In other news, Maldon station has seen a bit of a change, with a Bills Trough installed out the front to give the area a nice historic touch.

I would highly recommend googling ‘Bills Troughs’ it’s quite an interesting story and this is one of Maldon’s originals, so it’s nice that the Maldon Heritage Network have decided to have it on display at our Heritage station.

Next week will be more sleepers, Monday’s crew will meet at Maldon at 8am before heading out to Muckleford.