Now that all the curves have been strengthened, it’s into the straights. We’re starting from Muckleford and heading towards Castlemaine.

Scraping rock away from the fastenings.

With marks on the sleeper ends and the ballast scrapped away from the fastenings were we ready to start pulling screws and spikes.

This whole straight only needs about 230 concrete, of which 177 are already on site.

The big blower clears the rocks away brilliantly ready for pulling fastenings.

Before long all the spikes were pulled and the first 50 concrete were under the track. With Rolf running along with the blower clearing any dirt away before tamping up.

Tamping the sleepers up before clipping.

Of course interrupted by the critical lunchtime tea drinking ceremony.

All the kit, ready to do the next sleeper.

As we didn’t have a lot to do for the crew while the digger and scarifier were busy, they moved down to breaking up more 60lb rail, this time the rail removed from curve 13.

By days end we’d inserted 101 concrete sleepers, all tamped up and 52 clipped up. We’ve clipped them up using the inner lugs only through here as we plan to rerail this very soon and as we’re on a straight, gauge holding is well within the ability of the remaining timber sleepers. If we find it a problem we’ll install outer biscuits and clips.

So despite showers predicted, we’ll still be out again tomorrow, clipping up the final 49 sleepers and preparing the next lot of sleepers.

Today’s work was trimming and drilling 80lb rail at Muckleford.

50 rails had been laid out last week, ready for attention.

The rail clamp for the saw.

However the saw works much better once it’s fitted up with a new cutting disc.

Giving us lots of little bits of rail! Good for doorstops but unfortunately not much else.

The rail drill does a marvelous job.

However likewise it works best with a sharp bit. It’s a little more specialised, so Bazz got drafted in to do the sharpening.

These rails will soon be out at Tangent 20-21.

Meanwhile our digger was still over at Bullarto, completing the ballast spreading and final tamping.

We ended up with a very tidy and smart looking job and in typical Daylesford weather… All in the rain.

While over there, we helped them clear out a few blocked drains, quite a job in their heavily forrested areas.

Our few days over at Daylesford has helped them to return trains to Bullarto this Sunday. It’s nice to help out another railway, but it’ll be nice to get the digger back into action on our railway next week.

Tomorrow will be part 2 of our six monthly track inspection, Maldon to Muckleford. Meeting Maldon at 8am.

The past two days we’ve been over helping out the Daylesford Spa Country Railway.

We started off in a bitterly cold Daylesford replacing 3 point timbers.

Before moving to Bullarto to do some more of the same.

The main reason for our visit however, was to help them out with distributing ballast along their newly built track in Bullarto yard and tamping up the nice new turnout.

Our trusty digger being ideally suited to this.

The spreading of the ballast, all done with the digger, left the job looking very smart.

Followed by a pass with their production tamper, leaving it looking quite smart. We’re hoping this beast will spend some time tamping our railway over the coming months as part of our track upgrade works.

The digger will be there again tomorrow to finish off the ballasting now the tamping is complete. Plus another couple of odd jobs.

However our regular Thursday gang will still be running, preparing more 80lb rail at Muckleford (already nicely laid out ready for drilling and cutting).

Today saw the last curve on the whole line receive either concrete sleepers or heavier rail. A big achievement.

We flew through clipping up the remaining 50 or so sleepers, being well completed by lunch.

After which we turned our attention to ballast scraping and tamping.

This whole curve has had issues with cant (superelevation / cross fall) for a long time. We’ve tried spot corrections, which helped but we still had sections of negative cant and generally little to none elsewhere (less than desirable).

So we set about putting a track jack at every single concrete sleeper in the curve and jacking until the cross fall was around 25mm – a big job on this long long curve.

We were also corrected any dips that we came across. By the end of the curve we had a sensational system going to race the jacks along the job, largely carried our by our prison assistance, we’d certainly be struggling without them on these sorts of jobs.

But the end result was a stunning curve, beautifully smooth (a few crippled rails let it down unfortunately) and we’re incredibly proud, the best and the quickest curve we’ve completed to date.

Next week we’ll be sending our digger off to Daylesford to assist with some works on their railway.

However our usual gangs will still be running, with 80lb rail preparation on the cards for Thursday.