Sorting sleepers is a job best described as dull, if not extremely dull.

While the little digger is off on sick leave, the telehandler has been called in to deputise. It actually worked extremely well. However, it does require some relatively level ground, which we certainly don’t have everywhere.

The sorting component is required with these fastclip sleepers as they need to be preloaded prior to use. Throughout their many moves before arriving here, some have lost some bits or have damage, its best we’ve found to remove these issues at stock piles rather than spread out sleepers that aren’t easily used beside the track.

The tele was good for getting them off the stack, checking over for any needed fixing or rejecting, then making it easy for the digger to grab them up and run them out to their new home or stack aside for dealing with later on.

Today’s efforts, although only really a few hours, did get us enough prepared and dropped out to reach the culvert near Pipeline Crossing, a good few hundred metres. Only around 1200m to go to get to Donkey Farm Trk! We’ll be busy for a while yet.

Today’s work took place around a Driver Experience Train, whose participants happily obliged to allow it to double as a works train, bringing a wagon load of sleepers out from Muckleford. These were unloaded a little further around the curve, for distribution as required in the coming weeks.

We would highly recommend the Driver Experience Packages, all the participants seem to have a fantastic day and its great to be able to give people the chance to check out our hard a little more first hand. Check out the VGR website for all the Details –  https://www.vgr.com.au/drive-a-train

Thursday crew will be down at Muckleford Creek Bridge, starting at Maldon at 8am then all being well down at the Bridge around 8.30am.

Sorry about the delayed blog, however we did managed to have a good day on Friday, with the track work portion of 3 road completed.

It began very hot, very quickly on Friday, meaning it was only a half day workday, otherwise it was most probably we’d have had a few on the bench with heatstroke.

We managed to find the energy to do a decent tidy up of the area, with all the little loose items put away and general mess removed.

We’re yet to ballast and tamp this new track, that’s when we’ll worry about getting the line correct, the clearances here were historically extremely tight… so we’ll try improve that if possible and if not then the fence will need moving.

Tomorrow’s workday will be out by Pipeline Crossing, preparing concrete sleepers in aid of the big effort that’ll begin in March. Meeting Maldon 8am or on site from 8.30am

Today began making use of the morning cool to get a bit more of 3 road back in place.

It’s a bit clunky getting old VR type steel sleepers clipped to the various weights of rail we have in 3 Road, a combination of 60AD, 60D and then onto 80/94 for the turnout. But by ratting our repository of bits we were able to successfully clip things up successfully.

We’ve reinstated one panel of 60AS that was removed months ago. However, to aid in connecting up to the bigger rail and to avoid cutting 2 otherwise good lengths of 60AS we’ve actually installed a half length of 60D rail. It’s much easier to join to 80lb given the materials we had on hand.

We’ve cut and drilled the closure rails, in 80lb, however installing those will be tomorrow’s first job.

As from morning tea onwards, we had a change of pace, dropping out sleepers near Pipeline Crossing in readiness for our big resleepering effort to begin again in March.

Given that the wagons were already at Maldon, only the trip out and back was required. A nice small load as part of T333’s testing and bedding in process.

It was then onto marking up rail, as we discovered in last year’s effort, knowing where sleepers need to go precisely, and only handling them once is a massive time saver.

As always, every fourth was picked out in a different colour. This section will be in the same style as late last year, 1 in 4 e clips, the remainder will be fastclips.

It was a bit of a relearning curve as our trusty sleeper gauge had been packed away, and while it was being found, a stick from the bush was called upon to substitute.

Once the train was empty and the sleepers marked up, the heat had risen suitably to encourage us to call it a day.

Tomorrow’s crew will work towards completing 3 Road at Maldon before the day warms up, there’s a few other jobs to knock over at Maldon tomorrow also. Meeting there from 8am.

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.