We’ve had another change to plans, involving the construction of track into the new loco shed. Instead of putting it off until after we’d recovered some more rail from Guildford, we’re now going to get 1 track into the loco shed and 4 siding in the carriage shed connected up over the next couple of weeks.

The short remaining stub of track over the turntable has been removed, to allow for lowering of the earth to take full depth concrete sleepers.

A train of materials, sleeper and rails has been delivered to Castlemaine today in readiness for works.

Along with the ballast plough, on loan to us from the Daylesford Railway, in preparation for tomorrow’s ballast train.

The ballast train has been stabled in the carriage shed to keep the ballast nice and dry, just to make sure it’s extra dusty during tomorrow’s drop! It’s really just to ensure we don’t receive any unwanted vistors playing with the discharge doors while they’re fully loaded.

It’ll be a busy couple of weeks starting tomorrow, with something on everyday, so keep an eye on the blog to see if you can help out.

We had a very successful day today, with the last of the ‘clusters’ – groups of failed sleepers, between Muckleford and Midland Hwy now removed!

In fact it’s actually slightly better than that with this almost removing all clusters of failed sleepers the whole length of the line.

Any remaining clusters are so insignificant due to the high quality of surrounding sleepers that they can safely wait until the next sleeper cycle for correction (especially given how few trains are running). However given the majority of our sleepers are still timber and of a fair age, it’ll only be another 6 months before we have a few more to replace.

Today we installed 19 concrete sleepers today and replaced about 50 failed bolts, meaning this section of the track should hold together comfortably until we can re-rail.

Tomorrow will be a quiet day, tamping up today’s effort and moving machinery around in readiness to return to rail recovery from the Maryborough line in the coming weeks.

The past couple of days have been at Castlemaine, tidying up the site and spreading more gravel inside the carriage shed.

The civil team has just about finished it’s works at Castlemine for a while now.

Tomorrow we’ll be replacing the last 16 sleepers between Muckleford and Castlemaine, meeting at Maldon at 8am.

Today saw us clip up the remainder of the concrete sleepers and replace any failed bolts over the same section.

It’s a good feeling knowing that every sleeper we put in will still be there in 50 years time, certainly makes the large job of track maintenance seem much more achieveable.

We’d finished out on site, including tamping up, by lunch. So the afternoon’s work site became Castlemaine. We have a few little things to tend to in Castlemaine and next weeks rain predictions make working near a shed seem pretty attractive.

One job we did knock over today was replacing the last 12 sleepers towards the new turnout with concrete. Mainly because 11 of the 12 were failing and it is evident they we becoming buried or likely to in the future, so while we were all geared up we knocked it over.

Next Tuesday we’ll be in Castlemaine all day, doing some site tidy up and gravel spreading in the shed. Meeting at Castlemaine from 8.30am.