The flavour of February is Bridge work.

Yesterday was some pile tongue preparation in the depot at Maldon, as a big time saver for the pile that went in today.

Lots of precise measuring, cutting and adzing to achieve a nice square, true and long lasting tongue with good shoulders to support the crossheads.

The main point of this work is to replace these undersized piles in Muckleford Creek Bridge, although still structurally sound, there is little safeguard against deterioration.

In the nice cool air of this morning we set up the worksite and production line, before getting into the job of excavating the old pile (no. 3R).

The same process as yesterday ensued, measuring, cutting and adzing to prepare the next pile (tomorrow) and the base of today’s, Bazz drew the short straw on the chainsaw today.

Before long the old pile was lifted out and the condition of the sill (raft) below could be assessed. It looks in this picture that the ratchet straps are holding up the bridge! But this is not the case, they are simply assisting in keeping the cross heads out of the way for pile changing (they can’t fall because of how they’re fastened on the oppososite pile). The heavy duty props are actually the beauties doing all the bridge holding.

The old sill was found to be far beyond re-usable, so a new one was fashioned from good quality 2nd hand sleepers.

And seemingly in no time, the new pile was being swung into position, an easy enough job with a digger. Imagine doing this by hand.

It looked very swish on its new sill holding up the bridge, it’s just a pity all our hard work gets buried.

And buried it became, here some fine tuning of the shoulders (after we’d filled in the hole so we could actually reach them) saw the job turned from a good one, into an excellent one.

Hey presto, one pile successfully replaced. We’re yet to instate bolts and angled brakets, but tomorrow should see it either finished or well under way.

We’ve even dug the hole for tomorrow’s pile, no. 4L. Mal and Clive had the job of cleaning out the last bit of fill by hand, as any damage to the sill is avoided to ensure the compacted ground below is not disturbed.

We’ll be into it again tomorrow, meeting Maldon 8am or on site from 8.30am.

Over the past few weeks we’ve started very seriously sorting our stockpiles of material. Today saw the job almost completed around Maldon.

We’ve even had a large area cleared just for our storage, nicely out of view. Best of all we’ve taken the opportunity to sort, dispose of the rubbish and organise the rest to make life much easier.

We’ve laid out the materials so all items can be easily seen, collected by hand or minimal moving to get to with the digger.

After lunch we sent Rolf out looking for any signs of storm damage, of which none were found thankfully, while the rest of us distributed the remaining pallet of sleeper plates near Bendigo Road.

This month is Bridge month, with pile replacements planned at Muckleford Creek next week, some exploration of a settling pile at Rifle Range the week after and further work at Muckleford the weeks after that, any extra help would be appreciated as we will have works going on ever day.

Today was spent not only enjoying the much cooler weather, but also preparing for our next re-railing exercise.

One of the main tasks being the unfastening of the steel sleepers, here Clive uses the rattle gun on its trolley to unfasten the nuts. In total only 2 of around 80 bolts needed to be cut, which is a better rate than usual.

After unscrewing the nut, a gentle tap with a hammer frees up the lugs / spacers and they’re removed. Followed by the excavator using the boom to push the bolts through the sleeper into the dirt below. We finish this process during the final re-railing as it’s much easier when the sleeper can be lifted a little. After which we can install the pandrol lugs.

The unbolting and removal of the last few anchors kept us busy till lunch. After lunch a slightly bent 80lb rail was straightened, using the buda (rail bender).

We then collected all the old jewellery and sorted it into drums for future re-use, disposal or storage.

Lastly we distributed 2 pallets of sleeper plates along the up leg in readiness for that side.

Tomorrow will be an odd jobs day, with some tidy up and sorting of bits and bobs at Maldon, more sleeper plate distribution and a quick run along the line to make sure the recent storms haven’t caused any issues. Meeting Maldon 8am

At lunch time on Saturday we had driven the last spike, packed up all the gear and had started heading for home.

The drilling and spiking proceeded at a fast rate.

We even found time to squeeze up a mud hole that’s been half way along this section for years (it gets squeezed regularly, however hopefully this year we’ll have the time to dig it out and replace with clean ballast).

Unfortunately (for us) it was the last day for our visitors from Pichi Richi. They also seem to have missed out on photo opportunities over the past week so this is one of the gang from Friday. We’d like to thank Richard, Dani, Spoon, Patrick and Phil for all their help over the last week. We hope they enjoyed their week on our track gang.

Next week will be very quiet, with most of the gang either on leave or unavailable, there will be no workdays.