The past few days we’ve been back into trenching at Castlemaine.

About 3/4 of the way down the carriage shed is as far as we could go for now, without moving the track. Eventually it’ll go another 100m-ish along the full carriage shed (once built).

Conduits for electricity and NBN are now in, with the plumbing going in tomorrow, ready for backfilling before the heavy rails predicted this weekend.

Tomorrow the gang will be at Muckleford Creek Bridge tending to more lining and decking repairs.

Meet Maldon 8am or site from 8.30am.

Well it was an absolutely mammoth effort, but we’re done! The heat, the sweat, the dust and hard work are now behind us! For now anyway.

Thankyou enormously to our dedicated volunteers who really went above and beyond this week, we couldn’t have done it without you.

We’ve only just arrived back at Maldon, so we won’t be working Tomorrow, the 11hour days and long drives have taken their toll.

We’ll be back into things next week though.

Before we’d even started we’d tied up Bazz!

The main focus of the day was fastening up the sleepers. While we were waiting for all the crew to arrive another 50 were inserted, leaving only 44 for tomorrow.

The V crossing was also spiked up, check rail corrected and a few test trains run – all is good.

A lot of using the jackhammer manually (carrying it) is required in this job, not a lot of fun.

But thankfully we have use of the loco and flat wagon, making access much easier.

John and Bruce joined us today, doing most of the heavy lifting and spike driving.

We sent Bazz up as driver at the end of the day… Which went well until he discovered the sanding lever

And with only this one sleeper requiring spiking out of about 15, he managed to drop a very decent pile right where we needed to work, thanks Bazz!

We did have a very successful day. We’re now over half way with the spiking, but we’ll still have a full day tomorrow, at the least.

Today’s focus was on correcting the V crossing and inserting sleepers.

The V crossing in 60lb trackwork is riveted to a large steel plate for added strength and support. This plate (seen upside down here) had developed some serious cracks, resulting in the nose of the crossing becoming detached.

The whole crossing was removed, cracks welded and new bolts installed to hold the crossing in place. It’s looking pretty snazzy. Tomorrow’s job is to correct the check rail gap to ensure wheels can’t derail and tie it all down.

While that was going on, the excavator was busy inserting sleepers. About 110 have been inserted now, with 30 odd drilled one side and spikes started. The timbers being used are H4 treated 200×100 Treated Pine. Light weight but just as fiddly and almost identical time required as full sized sleepers.

Tomorrow will see the rest inserted and should see a big start made on spiking up.