This week is seeing lots of Train activity, with extra services running for the Seniors Festival. We chose to piggy back onto one of these trains to drop out sleepers and rails for Donkey Farm Track.

We only need to run our train out from Muckleford so we used the morning train to bring the Y class down for us.

Here Pete (The train Guard) prepares to send the train on its way after we’d cut off the Diesel.

The train headed off to Castlemaine giving us an 1.5 hour window to get our train out to site, unload the materials and return to Muckleford.

We didn’t manage to get any action shots of the unloading, but the resulting piles (all done using the excavator) can been seen here. The rails needed for the crossing were laid out beside the track, to leave the crossing clear the road traffic until we close it to do the works.

Our works train was made up of the same consist we used on Friday, not because we need it all but rather it was quicker and easier to bring the lot!

The rails needed to join up the crossing to the recently completed section are seen here.

Our timing was perfect and we even fitted in a bite for lunch before the train returned from Castlemaine.

With fingers crossed and some good luck we should have the bulk of the works completed this Thursday, with Friday available to finish off and tidy up.

Today was an odd jobs and finishing off day. The sleepers installed in 4 road at Maldon had the ballast replaced and were given a tamp before we permanently fastened down the scotch block.

This sidings looking the best it ever has! Which is important given the number of trains that use it these days.

After these works and usual Monday tidy up jobs were out of the way we tackled some dropped joints thought the yard, it’s amazing just how much better it makes the place look.

Tomorrow’s another civil workday, with a special train and material dropout for the rebuild of Donkey Farm Track crossing later this week.

Today was spent finishing off yesterday’s efforts at curve 9 by running out ballast and tamping.

We started by collecting the re-usable sleepers that were removed from the track yesterday and bundling them into packs of 16 for use elsewhere.

Just before morning tea our ballast train, well ballast wagon and a couple of well wagons, arrived and the rock was dropped and spread as required very swiftly.

We took the opportunity to load up the bundled sleepers and send them off to Muckleford.

A view of spread ballast prior to tamping. The new rock is the bluier material in the distance, as that was the area in most need.

A view post tamping after the gang has followed along boxing up the holes and cleaning the rock away from the sleepers and rails.

The new works look very impressive! A real credit to everyone involved.

Besides the continual need for monitoring and likely need for tamping as things settle, we expect to receive many years from this section before more serious works are needed.

Hopefully the next works will be re-railing, which should be an absolute breeze with these sleepers.

A close up, as promised, of our manufactured biscuits. As they are designed to do an almost identical job in steel sleepers, they are a perfect match for the 60lb rail on the concrete sleepers. It’s just a massive bonus we can cut one lug and get two biscuits!

The full assembly. We would strongly expect, like in the normal situation with heavier rail, this clipping will also have an anchoring effect, we’ll be monitoring this but it’ll take a few years to really know.

In the afternoon, with the main job done and dusted, we headed back to Maldon. Attending to some issues in 4 road. This pic shows a large dip which has been present since the last works here (we ran out of ballast at the time) being removed.

We also decided it was long overdue to replace some of the sleepers, particularly those near the derail block.

So 11 sleepers were replaced, meaning this once lightly used siding is now fit for the regular traffic it has been receiving. Here the ballast shoulder has been removed to allow for removal of the old and insertion of the new.

By this afternoon the gang had dwindled to only 3 so after fastening up the sleepers we called it a day. Tamping and scrapping back the ballast can wait until Monday.

Tuesday is set to be another workday, with more materials for the next project to be run out. Any extra hands would be greatly appreciated as it’ll be a bit fiddly fitting our works train around the seniors week special.

Today saw 56 concrete sleepers installed in curve 9 (near Sawmill Road). This is yet another first for the team, as this is the first time we’ve installed concrete sleepers under 60lb rail.

The condition of the timber was not fantastic around this curve, so we chose to install the new sleepers every third to ensure gauge holding was strong.

Earlier this week 100 sleepers were distributed along the curve. Although only 56 were needed, a loaded well wagon holds 100.

New pads, where needed were installed onto the concrete sleepers before we placed in the track.

As we are experiencing some settling of the sleepers installed in this section, we chose to do a ‘running lift’ to lift the whole section 50mm before installing the new sleepers.

This was two fold, to ensure we didn’t disturb the road base when installing the new sleepers and to make the process much easier.

We cheated some what in how we achieved the running lift, by unspiking every third sleeper (the ones to be removed), lifted the track up using the tamping head, installing a 50mm block of wood and then tamped the remaining sleepers to hold the new level.

We used about 20 blocks to really speed up the process, but next time we’ll remember to bring a bucket to lug them around in, as here Will tries to pick up and juggle as many blocks as possible.

The lifting, blocking and tamping process made it much easier and quicker to remove the old sleepers and allowed for less scarifying to install the new concretes. The pic above shows the old coming out while the scarifier follows behind cleaning out the hole.

This made for very quick installation of the new sleepers.

But today’s major difference was all during the clipping up process.

Here Clive drops out 2 standard 17.5mm biscuits and 2 manufactured biscuits. It’s the manufactured biscuits that are important for securing the 60lb rail to the concrete sleepers.

Here a clipped up and finished sleeper. As the inner edge of rail foot is in an almost identical spot to 80lb rail, we can use the standard plastic biscuit there, but the outside edge is approximately 16mm different to 80lb (60lb is the narrower) so a much larger biscuit is needed to fill the gap.

We found, by complete coincidence, that some of the old steel sleeper lugs, used in the bolt up style fastenings, have the perfect profile to complete the job and when they are cut exactly in half, two of the right size biscuits are produced. – We’ll pop up a close up picture of one tomorrow.

We weren’t sure how they’d go during the installation process as they don’t have anything to stop sideways movement while installing the clip, unlike the plastic biscuits, but that proved to be a false concern as they gave no trouble at all! Once clipped up movement isn’t possible due to the spring loaded e-clip holding down on it.

The pic above shows the easier method of installation (after much trying, debating and discussion).

Use the pan setter (blue tool) to lift and adjust the sleeper position until the plastic inner biscuit is in place. Then install the outer manufactured biscuit, tapping home if needed to ensure a nice snug fit and finally install e-clips. Then of course repeat for the other rail!

By lunch time we’d got the pattern very well down pat and we were easily clipping up a sleeper in less than 2 minutes! Not bad going for a first time and much quicker than drilling and spiking timber sleepers.

The hard working gang during a coffee break, as always discussions solved all the problems of the world… But no-one kept minutes so well have to discuss it all again next week!

The social aspect of the gang is a large part of the appeal we think and we’re always happy to have new people, so don’t be scared off because you think it’s all about trains and hard work.

The 1 in 3 concrete sleepers are very obvious and will be until they get some dirt on them, but they also look very impressive. They should ensure this section of track will be strong and safe for many, many years.

After a packup we scrapped up what rock we could from the shoulders, although the section in the picture above has sufficient ballast for tamping and finishing, the other end of the curve is very light on for rock, so a wagon load will be distributed in the morning before we tamp it up.

Requiring ballast is a trade off of lifting the 50mm, which although needed will quickly deplete our small ballast reserves. There’s always a catch.

So feel free to join us tomorrow, 8am from Maldon or 8.45am on site.