Another very long day, but it’s done.

We began today by installing 6 concrete sleepers, removing the last timber sleepers under the insulated joints, we’d held off doing this until the track leads (part of the flashing light circuitry) were pulled out of the way.

Then the rock went on while the closure rails were cut, drilled and installed.

And this is why we cut closure rails, to move this horizontal step in head wear away from the insulated joints.

Now that step couldn’t be left in the track as it was, so we finally put to use our rail grinder, and what a great job it does!

The final lift and very thorough tamp.

A final dressing of rock and a good whack saw a sensationally hard surface ready for the hotmix. The whacker, hotmix and traffic control are all courtesy of our local shire, Mount Alexander, without their generous support it would be many many years before we could afford to do this, thanks a million!

By 1pm, the allotted time, the hotmix hit the ground. Spread initially with our digger, which saved a power of time and effort.

The finish achieved is really very stunning, the asphalting crew certainly knew all about railway crossings, so hopefully we’ll be able to call on them again.

V/Line also made use of the opportunity to renew all the very old track leads and rail connections, which apparently has resulted in a significant improvement in circuitry. They were fully recommissioned and tested without any trouble.

Once again, a massive thank you to everyone that has helped us out with this project. But a big shout out to Mount Alexander Shire Council, V/Line and our sensational track gang for achieving such a marvellous job.

Next week is a little up in the air, however Tuesday will certainly be a tidy up at Rowe Street Day, meeting Maldon 8am or on site from 8.30am.

Well, all those weeks of preparation really paid off today, we’re leaps and bounds ahead of where we were at Bendigo Rd at the same time.

We cut the asphalt yesterday, to get ahead of the game.

As the track was already in the correct location, datum marks were placed well clear of the trench, by driving nails into the asphalt, the section which gets removed tomorrow.

Once the crossing had been excavated to sleeper level, the big digger lifted the track, while the backhoe knocked off the old sleepers, a pretty enormous time and back saver!

The old rails were dragged well clear, loose jewellery collected before the sleepers were loaded straight into a tipper for removal.

Then onto careful excavation, although a very thorough pre-check of all service locations was undertaken, there were potentially a couple of wildcards, however everything was exactly where we predicted it would be.

Lots of height checking, and location checking for the railway signalling cable saw us with a very tidy trench. We chose to not go any lower as it was becoming obvious we weren’t that far off getting to bottom of the compacted gravel layer, with our local plastic clay no doubt sitting just below. This does mean we sacrifice a thicker layer of ballast, however it’s still going to perfectly adequate for our trains and the road traffic.

Geofab and drainage installed, with a layer of ballast to only about 50-75mm of final height was rolled in before sleepers were dropped out.

Some precision rail cutting and drilling, as we really wanted to correct the fact that the old rails were really too short, having massive joint gaps, which was a disaster for the health of the insulated joint end posts.

A good amount of time was spent trying to locate the sleepers as accurately as possible, using the offset marks made earlier and an off cut of rail.

Once happy with the sleepers the big digger was called in to drag up the new rails, which we’ll note on record were the perfect length! Immediately it looked a stunning curve.

After some very minor tweaking, we managed to convince our rather large gang to hang around an hour longer than usual, which saw us clip up everything assosiated with these island rails. A few minutes of final lining in the morning and it’ll be a really nice curve once again.

We had a sensational gang today, 17 people, a massive thank you to everyone! These lights still fall under V/Line control, so a massive thankyou to them for disabling them this morning and assisting in making the job so much easier.

All that said, we’re still not quite ready to call in the asphalters, we need to ballast, lift and fully tamp the track. Cut in new closure rails either end of the new track section and get the lights re-comissioned.

We’ll be meeting on site from 7.30am tomorrow and hopefully it’ll all go as well as it did today and we might even get an early(ish) knock off!

After a good few weeks of preparations we’re now ready and eager to rebuild Rowe St. Crossing on Thursday and Friday.

We’ll have a small crew meeting at Maldon station at 7am on Thursday, with the rest of the gang meeting us at Rowe St. from 7.30am – parking is likely to be a slight problem, so please park well out the way down on Adam Street.

We can always use extra hands, so please feel free to join us either day.

191 full depth concrete sleepers have been dropped out around Curve 21, with around that again need to complete the curve.

Any long fishplates preventing us using concrete have also been changed.

We spent the afternoon tidying up what had become a rather ridiculous mess on the well wagons, 5 pallets of stuff was collected off the wagons and removed to the storage yard!

Next week we’ll be rebuilding Rowe Street Level Crossing. The final preparations will take place on Tuesday and it’ll be all systems go from 7am on Thursday Morning at Maldon or on site at Rowe St. from 7.30am.