Today we finished off the urgent re-timbering in Castlemaine Yard, only one more timber installed but a fair amount of gauging and cross-boring was required.

The end result looks pretty snazzy. We do still need to tamp these, however with no trains running there isn’t a great rush.

The shed’s still going along at a great pace, it’s starting to look like it’s almost ready for cladding.

The afternoon was spend removing the fastenings between Midland Hwy and Winters Flat Bridge ready for the concrete sleeper treatment.

Early next week will be a bit all over the place with a few other commitments cropping up, there won’t be a workday on Tuesday but should have some activity on Wednesday if anyone’s at a loose end.

The day began with an almost record breaking clipping up of concrete sleepers, we’d clipped up all 90 before morning tea.

We’ve got a very well practised system now, now that we’ve more or less run out these sleepers.

Hopefully more sleepers are very close on the horizon.

Today Clive managed to get his car a little closer to mother nature after deviating just slightly from the hard track, nothing a snatch strap couldn’t manage thankfully.

The rest of the day was spent replacing some point timbers in Castlemaine Yard. It’s always time consuming work, requiring disassembly of rodding and working in restricted space.

We did fairly well considering, with 7 out of 8 under the track, 1 to go tomorrow and bit of cross boring to tidy up some funny gauge.A keen eye would note the shed going up in the background.

It’s going up at a staggering pace! No doubt we’ll be able to show further progress tomorrow. Meeting 8.30am at Castlemaine Station platform 3.

The past two days have been very productive, with all the pads installed on the 90 concrete sleepers trackside, all fastenings from Pyrenees Hwy to Winters Flat Bridge unfastened for the concrete sleeper treatment (it’s in anticipation for a delivery of more next week).

We have even managed to insert 81 of the sleepers in preparation for tomorrow’s clipping up. The other 9 are just waiting for the sleeper trenches to drain after filling in the storm last night.

Today also saw a full tamp and ballast scrape of everything unfinished on the down side of Pyrenees Hwy.

Tomorrow we’ll be meeting between the bridges around 8.30am to clip up the concretes before we move to Castlemaine to replace a few very tired point timbers.

Another busy preparation day today, with 90 concrete sleepers dropped out along curve 7.

Tomorrow will be removing fastenings, anchors and preparing to install the concrete. Meeting Maldon 8am or on site from 8.30am.