A quite note before we begin, our buy a sleeper campaign is going very well, since 1st April 2024 we’ve raised an impressive $66,210 towards our target of $250,000.

Thank you to everyone who has donated. If you can help us out in any way, please consider making a donation to our buy a sleeper campaign – https://www.vgr.com.au/product/buy-a-sleeper/406

It’s been hot!! Really hot. However, for some reason, we haven’t quite managed to convince ourselves not to keep going out in it! (But we do finish early)

Friday saw us fit up the spreader bars and point lever onto the new turnout in Maldon Yard. But not before we’d been out and replaced another 50 odd fishplates!

When we collected these turnouts, many years ago, from around Melbourne, they were all standard gauge. The fundamental differences are very minor, however everything is 6.5″ closer together than what we need. Including the spreader bars.

Needless to say we’ve now well and truly used up our supply of broad gauge spreaders so it’s onto modifying the standard gauge ones, they’re actually a good design, with interchangeable parts for different gauges, however we’ve used up those bits too! So, given that we’re now deep into siding territory, we’ve welded in a 6.5″ section in, to achieve the required result. We’d be reluctant to do this on a mainline, however in a siding, this is still miles ahead of what we were using previously.

The end result looked very much like it did previously, however fully functional.

We called up our local earthmover to assist us in getting some gravel, which although was by no means urgent, arrived only a few hours later!

However by Friday afternoon, we were knackered and left the pile for this week.

Before the heat really picked up this morning, we spread the gravel to form a really very nice place for us to cross the track, it’s surprising how often we use this little crossover, and climbing over rails was becoming a nuisance.

With a very light compact from the whacker, this gravel (Muckleford Crush, if anyone needs some good gravel) sets amazingly, giving an ideal walking surface between our depot and the engine shed.

The rest of today was a little less exciting… we made good headway in getting 3 road connected back up, however one thing lead to another, and what was a weep on the little digger became a bit more severe…

The small cylinder in the quick hitch failed, the gland has simply had enough and fallen apart, so it’s now off being repaired, it’ll be at least a week but likely longer. Unfortunately, as mentioned previously, this machine is now in very poor health, mainly due to the extreme amount of work it’s done – we are extremely proud that we’ve managed to wear it out and it’s done extremely well given the work it’s completed, however it’s certainly due for replacement.

Hopefully now the first panel of 3 road is back roughly in place, the new alignment etc… can be seen, there is very little different to before however we susoect the fence will be too close.

We’re hoping to replace as much as we can with steel sleepers here, as we’re certainly not wanting to come back anytime soon.

It’s a tight space and the big digger can only slew a few degrees before fouling on something, so it’ll certainly be slow going until the little digger is back, but we’ll get there, there isn’t a great rush currently for this.

Thursday’s crew will meet at Maldon at 8am, depending on how things go tomorrow, we’ll either be in Maldon Yard again, or out at Muckleford Creek Bridge, either way we’ll be at Maldon for a while first up to load up trucks.

We had another successful day of replacing fishplates today.

We’re now within sight of Donkey Farm Trk, only around 120 fishplates to go now!

We’ve collected the 6 holers for trimming down to size.

Up at Maldon, a clever jig has been whipped together to make the task of cutting a lot easier, a pallet in a morning is now a comfortable task.

Some additional work was done on our new turnout up at Maldon earlier in the week, we’re still yet to actually fit up the point lever, however given it doesn’t really go anywhere just yet it’s a bit of a low priority.

Tomorrow’s crew will tackle another pallet of fishplates, meeting at Maldon 8am or near Donkey Farm Trk from 8.30am.

More fishplates today, in the heat. Each of these sessions gets us closer to Donkey Farm Trk.

Certainly a job well done and no small effort in this weather!

As you may have read on the VGRs social media last week, we were victim of another theft, more track materials and this time also a break in to the Muckleford Station Building whereby 2 Train Staff Ticket Boxes were stolen. A total replacement cost of $200,000 for the track items stolen in recent times is not unrealistic, as many of the items just aren’t made anymore, or if they are, they’re very expensive. We’ll hopefully find some items through other avenues, but for now, we’ve still got enough to keep us going, but it will have an impact in a few years’ time.

We made a decision on Friday to remove all our easily stolen items from Muckleford and bring them up to Maldon behind lock and key, a wagon load and 2 truck loads were brought up and that has pretty much cleaned out Muckleford. It’ll take us a while to sort all of this into a logical system but we’ll get there.

Thursday’s gang won’t be running however Friday’s will be, meeting at Maldon at 8am

We had an extremely successful day today, with our new turnout almost complete.

We began the day by finishing off the headshunt, dropping out the rest of the rails, bolting it all together and clipping it up.

This was all done the easy way, squeezing everything up with the grabs and only using the handtools when needed – certainly saved some time, this doesn’t work accurately enough for out on the running line, but for a siding, what we’ve done will be adequate for at least 100 years.

We tried something a little different this time, before installing the curved rails, we ballasted what we could from the tipper and the rest using the digger.

This was a massive improvement, as we didn’t have to spend hours shovelling rock around the complex trackwork, just a few scrapes with the bucket, a quick blow and we were in business.

Like the turnout before, the ground below had been installed with a fall to aid drainage, as such the straight leg required a very small lift only, while the other leg did need some jacking. The laser level proved its value once again!

Before long it was into cutting rail ready to install the closures. We got very lucky with the cool weather today for rail cutting, however a good dampen down before and after the cuts was still a good idea.

Before long it was into the fine tweaking of the curve to ensure it was consistent and smooth, it most clearly wasn’t at the time of this photo, however it turned out very nicely.

The usual processing of drilling, spiking and installing the matching rail followed, all with what seemed like a minimum of fuss.

A bit of final ballasting certainly saw the job nicely in hand.

We’re rather proud of our efforts for this week, we’ve still got a bit to go tomorrow, spreader bars, point lever etc etc however it’s likely we’ll knock them over.

We do however have a small excursion to Muckleford planned tomorrow morning, however we’ll still meet at Maldon at 8am, then off to Muckleford by 8.30am, all being well we’ll be back to Maldon by morning tea to continue with our works.