Due to some unforeseen circumstances, there won’t be a workday tomorrow (Tuesday).

However today saw V/Line and their welding contractors make a solid start at welding in the insulated joints at Bendigo Rd.

We even made a start on an extra job which popped it’s head up over the weekend, a fractured rail in 1 road at Muckleford needs replacing.

When we checked to make sure the sleepers were good enough to take a cross bore for a new rail, we decided it was time to replace the whole high leg of this short curve and install 1 in 3 concrete sleepers, as the overall timber condition was not great. It was also found the adjoining rails weren’t in as new condition, so we’ll replace the whole high leg with one single 40m rail to remove the joints in the curve.

We had planned to be working here tomorrow finishing it off, however due to some unforeseen circumstances, we won’t be running a workday tomorrow, hopefully this will now become Thursday’s job.

Laying out point timbers was today’s task.

It’s a job that always takes a while, as the accuracy of the timber spacings is directly related to the ease of construction and quality of the end result.

The digger does 99% of the heavy lifting, but a bit of crowbar work finishes the job nicely.

It’s all very quickly looking very smart.

Hopefully next week will see us very close to having the straight portion of the turnout completed, the curved bit might wait a few more weeks, getting the turntable reconnected is a slightly higher priority currently.

It almost seems a shame that we have to ballast it and hide all our good work.

Check back here Monday afternoon, but the plan is that we’ll be full swing into turnout building from 8am here on Tuesday, with more later in the week.

About the only time we saw the sun today was first up, quite welcome during the morning chill.

Today saw us start the rebuild of the Turntable road inside the compound gates. As per the rest of the road it’ll be fully concrete sleepered and filled to rail height to all for the roadway.

First job today was converting old 6 hole 80lb fish plates into 4 hole plates (as 6 holers are too long to work with concrete sleepers at joints).

Once we’d finished the ground work, it was onto laying track.

We’re using up the most awkward of the full profile concrete sleepers around the yard, saving the newer style sleepers for the mainline.

While the track was being assembled, Rolf was busily setting out the location of the new turnout. Hopefully we’ll make a start on that tomorrow. It might look like it’s all heading in strange directions, but trust us, it’ll work out eventually.

Tomorrow, we’ll be meeting here from 8.30am.

It’s been a while since we’ve run a works train. Today’s train was transporting turnout components and concrete sleepers to Castlemaine for the upcoming works.

We had quite a train, the unloading of which proved to be a bit fiddly in the narrow space beside the carriage shed, but we managed it and just before the drizzle set in.

Thursday and Friday we’ll be in at Castlemaine, meeting there from 8.30am. The weather will be the decider as to the actual job, but it’ll be somewhere near the turntable either way.