Today saw us install the remaining concrete sleepers either side of Rowe St. to achieve 100% concrete, short of bringing in the final materials (fabrics and drainage etc…), we couldn’t be more ready for next week’s rebuild.

And it looks pretty snazzy too.

We started by lifting the low leg of the curve to match about the required height following the rebuild, mainly to save time on the day but also to make the final sleeper changes easier.

It’s a very well practised routine now, with the 32 concretes installed in no time.

While it might seem logical to just go through and replace all the sleepers at once, where there is lots of ballast like here, you end up just burying yourself and getting no where, this method doesn’t require a single shovel to be picked up at any stage of the game!

Although the gang still like to tidy things up manually in the quiet times.

It also means it can all be done under traffic, so if we get a failure on a digger, trains can still run.

A combination of the bucket and a lump of old sleeper, seem to get the ballast profile back into good shape.

We’ve bundled up all the timber sleepers we’re keeping (to be used in the Yards) and stacked them ready for taking away.

We’ve come a long way from the old days of manually stacking the sleepers ready for strapping, now the digger and the grabs do everything, exact apply the strap, which as you can see above always takes a few minutes to re-learn, but strangely satisfying when it works.

Once everything received a final tamp and a bit of ballast tidy up, it all came up looking very smart and should make next week’s rebuild job just that much easier and quicker. Next Thursday and Friday are our planned re-build days, essentially a copy of the recent work at Bendigo Rd.

Tomorrow however, a change of scene, we’ll be dropping out concrete sleepers along curve 21 (near Bendigo Rd – Maldon) and preparing for the next round of sleeper replacements along there. Meeting Maldon 8am or on site from 8.30am.

Another 37 concrete sleepers were installed today around Rowe St.

Except for the sleepers under the insulated joints, which we’ll do when the lights are disabled in case we damage the wires, we’ve achieved 1 in 2 concrete sleepers over the length we’ve been working on.

It’s been a few years since we’ve replaced many sleepers here, so this process is ensuring we’re catching any failing timber in time, while giving us a long lasting secure section of track.

This makes a good before shot, prior to the crossing rebuild. The road surface is starting to break up badly, a sign things below are probably going the same way.

The following are some general pics showing the works.

These works, although not tamped and tidied as yet, do now take us to having concrete sleepers at least 1 in 3 (generally better) all the way from Castlemaine Yard to just past Rowe St, a significant portion of track.

Tomorrow we’ll be back here finishing off so that trains can run on Saturday, depending on numbers we may even install a few more concretes to get us up to 1 in 1 near the crossing, otherwise we’ll head around the corner and use the big digger to line some of the ugly sections further into the curve.

Meeting Rowe St. crossing from 8.30am.

Today was spent dropping out material and preparing for resleepering around Rowe St.

By days end we’d dropped out a couple of hundred sleepers and begun the task of inserting them, only about 10 so far however, but we’ll do more later this week.

Thursday morning meeting Maldon 8am or Rowe St. from 8.30am.

The week began by installing a few more concrete sleepers at what will become the approach blocks for Bendigo Rd. Some joint shifting was undertaken too to prevent conflicts with the flashing light circuits.

While technically not essential, it’ll make the next part of the work far easier, quicker and will overall be less work.

Today’s task was a bit of a trial, a very successful one too.

Curve 21 (the curve between Bendigo Rd and Woodlock’s Ln) is the only section of the track not to have received attention in the past 5 years.

The sleepers spacings in the curve are all over the place, which makes standard replacements a nightmare. So we decided we’d trial re-sleepering 100% with full profile concrete.

We went through and unfastened every 2nd timber sleeper (more if the spacings were wrong), followed by jacking the track to a suitable height (now nice and light due to few sleepers) and inserting ever second Concrete Sleepers without having to dig down and disturb the roadbed too much. Once done and clipped up, the rest of the old timber was replaced with concrete.

The method worked a treat and as the initial jacking was kept relatively uniform, only minor jacking was required once all the sleepers had been installed to achieve a good top.

By not completely releasing the track, the line of the curve wasn’t lost and very very little effort was required to gauge the rails for clipping up in the concretes (as the timber was still holding it).

It’s received a good tamp and a sprinkle of ballast. We’ll run a few train loads of rock out once we’ve done a bit more.

It’s come up a treat, although only 47 sleepers today, out of about 500 in the curve, have been installed, it was a very good test day and was comfortable without being rushed. If we had two clear days, we could easily expect to triple that number no worries.

Next week, Tuesday will see a start made at Rowe St. Crossing. We’ll be running a train load of sleepers out there ready for the rebuild and will hopefully begin installing a few. Meeting Maldon 8am or Rowe St. Crossing from around 9.30am.