What started out a rainy humid day, became and even rainier and more humid day!

But we didn’t let that deter us too much.

While the digger made it’s way to site from Castlemaine, the crew started about removing the sleeper plates.

Once on site the 38 sleepers in this short straight were quickly changed over for their replacements.

There was also quite a bit of sleeper respacing required along here, which was done as the digger went along the job.

A badly sitting fishplate was taken off and replaced with a better fitting version, sometimes the more worn rails are best with less worn plates.

Lunch was held in vehicles, to avoid the rain. With John and Will making good use of the close proximity to ignore each other and look at their phones!

The spiking gun in action, nearing the end of the jobsite.

A good tamp followed.

With a scrape from the digger to restore some material around the sleepers seeing the job at a close. To call it ballast here would be a bit generous… But it’ll do until we can apply a good layer of rock.

Tomorrow will see us run a works train to run out more timber sleepers, to allow us to continue towards Maldon. Meeting Maldon 8am.

Today was all about finishing off and tidying up the recent sleeper renewals between Muckleford and Pipeline Crossing.

All those not yet tamped, were squeezed up. While the whole length had the ballast regulated to tidy up the mess.

The finished product looks very neat and tidy!

Next week will see the gang in Castlemaine on Tuesday, before we return to Pipeline Crossing to finish the final 40 or so sleepers in this section, taking us to about half way to Maldon.

A bit more sleepering today, with around 60 installed into curve 16.

We’re starting to get pretty slick with these timber sleeper changes and will shortly need to go and install some more concrete sleepers to release enough timber for the rest of the length towards Maldon.

We’ll be out again tomorrow, with a plan being to tamp all these up, box up everything from the past few weeks. Meeting Maldon 8am or curve 16 from 8.15am.

It looks a million dollars… And it works perfectly!

Today was all about fastening down the timber to the table and installing the locking mechanisms.

We don’t like to brag but how snazzy does this look!

We couldn’t have got the locking blocks more central if we tried, they are perfect and align the rails exactly, no matter how the table is turned.

We’ve now got a system of belts and braces securing the rails and locking blocks.

The cut outs in the timber will prevent any wayward movement should movement occur, however the fastenings have all been installed into tight fit holes, therefore requiring significant decay of the timber before things can get floppy.

This should easily see 30 years of service, if not more.

A lovely job, even if we do say so ourselves.

We’re now back to our railway, with some small jobs at Castlemaine happening tomorrow, meeting Maldon 8am or Castlemaine from 10am.