Another successful day. We’ve now completed the trackwork portion of the loco road.

We’ve ballasted, lifted and tamped the run off from the table, with the rock that was dug out from here a few weeks ago.

The rest of the track has been jacked to very near it’s final height and blocked in place with lots of packers. This will allow us to bucket in the gravel ballast without having to try and lift through the gravel.

The end result looks pretty good, certainly a much higher class than is really needed for a loco road.

In the afternoon, we loaded all of our drums and pallets of jewellery that we’ve slowed amassed in the Yard onto wagons ready for taking away to a better home.

We also turned two of the ballast hoppers, so that all of the discharge wheels were on the same side.

And the first few metres of our new track were tested by resting the ballast plough there while the hoppers were turned.

It’s been a very successful couple of weeks. Tomorrow, owing to a small backlog of small odd jobs and very low gang numbers we’ve called it off as a workday.

Tuesday next week will be a gang as usual, 8am at Maldon. And with any luck the ballast will be on site before Thursday to allow us to complete the loco road.

Well after a busy day today, the centre track into the loco shed is more or less complete (the building it part anyway).

Some more material dropping out yesterday saw all gang arrive today to this view, all the sleepers out and the rail roughly dropped in position.

By morning tea however, all that was bolted together and clipping up was well underway.

We’ve built a temporary track over the pit, mainly as this is the quickest way of setting our levels for the track off the pit and it gives us somewhere to work from when it comes to fitting timber to the next pit over.

It’s looking pretty snazzy, there is a little bit of lining to do, but very little, that’s the benefit of having it all pegged out before we started.

Building track with 80/94lb rail and concrete sleepers is a essentially a mechano big set, in comparison to working with timber! It’s still a bit of hard work but nothing like drilling holes and driving dog spikes.

We’re not quite done here, so Thursday will be back here from 8.15am to tie up all the loose ends and mark a brief start on the ballasting and lifting.

Well after a busy day today, the centre track into the loco shed is more or less complete (the building it part anyway).

Some more material dropping out yesterday saw all gang arrive today to this view, all the sleepers out and the rail roughly dropped in position.

By morning tea however, all that was bolted together and clipping up was well underway.

We’ve built a temporary track over the pit, mainly as this is the quickest way of setting our levels for the track off the pit and it gives us somewhere to work from when it comes to fitting timber to the next pit over.

It’s looking pretty snazzy, there is a little bit of lining to do, but very little, that’s the benefit of having it all pegged out before we started.

Building track with 80/94lb rail and concrete sleepers is a essentially a mechano big set, in comparison to working with timber! It’s still a bit of hard work but nothing like drilling holes and driving dog spikes.

We’re not quite done here, so Thursday will be back here from 8.15am to tie up all the loose ends and mark a brief start on the ballasting and lifting.

4 siding received it’s final tweaking today, removing the last of a dip and bringing it up level with 3 siding.

The end result is pretty good. Some of our best track is now in sidings.

But the majority of today was spent getting stuck into building the loco shed centre road. The curves required for entry were stringlined, centre line pegs were installed and sleeper spacings marked out.

108 full profile concrete sleepers were distributed along side.

And we even found enough time to lay out about half of them, it’s starting to look really good and after we’ve dropped on the rails on Tuesday it’ll look very smart.

We’ll be using a gravel ballast through this whole area to safe on expensive ballast and to as the whole area will end up largely filled, it should provide a more uniform finish.

Another successful week, with next week looking just as promising! Meeting at Castlemaine from 8.15 on Tuesday.