A very exciting bit of action today with two Franna’s on site to move the old guards van body.

Actually it was a bit of a non event, it was all over in about 30mins, nicely levelled and at home about 300m north of here.

The cloud of dust is the van about to be touched down in its new home. It certainly opened up the area and shows just how large our new engine shed will be!

As promised a few more shots of the much cleaner yard.

It really looks very impressive tidied up.

As part of these works we lose our current access roadway, so we spent some time removing the old sleepers from 5 siding ready to make way for our new roadway.

It’s all starting to happen and it’ll be very exciting once the building works start.

The next two weeks (starting Tuesday) will be more work for Steamrail down at Newport. Some of our recently removed timber sleepers will be heading down too to help complete the works. Seen here at Muckleford ready for transport.

If you’re Melbourne based and looking to spend some time on our gang, the next two weeks would be not only a great opportunity but it would be greatly appreciated! Please contact ganger@vgr.com.au if you’re interested.

Today was a massive clean up day in Castlemaine Yard, in readiness for the upcoming works.

We began by cleaning up the sleepers stacked (dumped) beside the carriage shed.

These were all nicely bundled and strapped by the crew for stacking up the far end of the yard.

We also had plenty of action around us while crew training was going on with the visiting S & B class.

We even relocated the water tank that was laying near the shunters cabin, to well out of the way for the upcoming works.

The afternoon was spent breaking up jointed rails and stacking them aside as well as many other clean up jobs.

A place was cleared ready to accept the guards van body that’s in the way of the new engine shed. We’ll no doubt use it as a crew hut during the works so it won’t be too far away from the action.

We even bundled up our spare point rodding and stacked it sensibly aside so it doesn’t get in the way.

More pictures to follow tomorrow but the whole area is looking amazing as our helpers from the prison set about mowing all the grass in the area. Tomorrow will see some action as the van body gets moved and we get the last of the rails etc… out of the way for the earthworks.

It was quite a simple day today, with no staggering achievements but we did get the last of the timber sleepers from curve 8 bundled and all of those from the curve loaded onto a wagon and dropped at Muckleford.

We also had time to tidy up the ballast at yesterday’s worksites which leaves both looking pretty swish.

Next week’s attentions will be at Castlemaine Yard, tidying up our materials in preparation for the new engine shed project.

The rest of curve 8 received the 1 in 3 concrete sleeper treatment today. This leaves only one long curve (11) on the whole railway which hasn’t been either re-railed or re-inforced with concrete sleepers.

Nothing too exciting, no new methods or techniques, however we are certainly perfecting our ways as all 42 were installed and clipped up before lunch.

We’ve decided the shovel measure works, so we’ll run with that from now (maybe a slightly reinforced version as some panel beating was required!).

We managed to squeeze in enough preparation on Tuesday to actually insert 10 sleepers and tamp them up, to keep the gang busy first off today. The Tuesday preparation is the make or break of a successful Thursday/Friday.

Our success was so great we even completed the same treatment between curves 9 and 10 where only 18 sleepers were needed. Unfortunately Tuesday’s preparation didn’t extend to here so this was a little more time consuming (the sleepers were still stacked and the screws not removed).

We even completed all the tamping at both locations, done under Rolf’s watchful eye. Tomorrow afternoon will see some ballast scraping to tidy up and if we get time we’ll bundle the sleepers too.

Tomorrow morning will be in Castlemaine Yard tending to various bits and pieces.