We had a bit of a change of pace today, making up some new track rather than just fixing up old stuff.

It’s a run-off road for Castlemaine Turtable.

The logic of it is pretty clear from the pics, lining up with the 2nd set of roads that head into the loco shed.

As time and resources become available this can be extended back towards the ashpit, and when we get really wealthy we can consider getting back over the ashpit! However that’ll be a way off.

We spent a lot of time getting the levels close enough that we only did a minimum dig and didn’t need to do much lifting to achieve final height, as we don’t have much of a budget for this sort of work currently.

We did, however, need to keep the road access, so once the track was built and packed, we did drop in a few tipper loads of gravel.

We had to test it of course… the bit off the roadway will hold a Y class exactly – we could say we planned it, but it is a complete fluke!

We had a lot of trouble getting nice alignment with the turntable, we’ll have a bit more of a tweak on Thursday morning to see if we can improve it.

Thursday’s crew will meet at Castlemaine Depot from 8am, we’ve got a few odd jobs in the morning, then we’ll run a works train through to Maldon to clear the civil wagons out of Castlemaine Yard ahead of train running returning on Friday 7th.

We’ve had a big week, but it has been very successful.

We’ve replaced 138 timber sleepers with concretes, 18 point timbers, removed a small mountain’s worth of foliage, removed a good number of small top defects and given the area a pretty in depth tidy up.

This morning began with a good amount of tamping, correcting a few tips and minor faults, nothing major, but it certainly makes everything look much nicer.

A general tidy up and clean around all the important mechanical components was a big focus of the day.

Once the tamping was completed, it was onto boxing up and ballast tidying.

It’s come up looking very tidy.

A lot of manual work was undertaken on the turnouts to make them look much more presentable and, more importantly, make inspection of the fastenings and timbers much easier.

Quite a bit of additional foliage removal was undertaken. This will hopefully mean we don’t have any major hassles here for a good few years now, it was becoming very overgrown.

As we inadvertently could have altered all points, signals and locking at this end of the yard, a full check and some minor adjustments were made to ensure everything was working correctly.

A keen eye might also note that a spectical has again been fitted to the outer home signal – the coloured glass bit.

We’re getting towards our overall goal of getting 100% concrete sleepers into this section, only about 150 timber sleepers remain now, right out to Rowe Street, a few more Vline shutdowns, and we’ll be there.

By the end of today, the Vline contractors were making excellent headway, getting the track back in place up at their worksite, they plan on having the job completed tomorrow. VLine have ensured that any timber sleepers in our track that required lifting for these works have gone back as concrete, which helps us out greatly, it’s not a massive number but it’s certainly not insignificant.

It’s been a busy week, had the weather been kinder we would have been able to install a further 50 or so concrete sleepers, however all considered we’ve done very well and we’ve certainly made good use of the opportunity getting the shrubbery back under control.

We’ve handed the site back to Vline, there’s only a few days left of the occupation with test trains running on Wednesday and normal trains back on Thursday.

Next week will see us sort out our now rather massive mess that’s spread far and wide around Castlemaine Yard. Tuesday’s crew will meet at Castlemaine Depot from 8am.

Not quite as hot but still very hot!

We decided that install of tackling the 60 odd sleepers to get to marker post 125kms, we would tackle only 20 more timber sleepers on the Melbourne side of the road bridge, which ended up being a little too easy so we extended that by another 12, making today’s total 32 concrete sleepers installed. Certainly not as impressive as when we’re out in the bush, but given the heat, conditions and rather awkward nature of the work, it was pretty good going.

Infact we did achieve quite a bit more today too, with V/Line safeworking attending this morning to allow us to refit and test the point lever we removed to replace point timbers yesterday.

V/Line took the opportunity to get their turnout lubricated and serviced while they were there – a bit of a win for everyone, thanks V/line for making the time to attend it certainly saved us a lot of guess work.

The 32 new sleepers don’t actually stretch very far around the curve, however it’s 32 less that we need to replace next time.

This afternoon, after the crew had packed up and went to have a well-deserved break from the heat, all of the recent replacements received a tamp, there’s a few small top issues we’ll correct in the morning however on the whole it’s looking pretty good.

We’ve even managed to get stuck into that foliage that was ridiculous close and flicked it out of the way – we’ll get a good dose of weedspray onto that tomorrow, which should hopefully arrest its return.

One feature of this week’s work which hasn’t featured too heavily is the use of the civil train, parked up in the platform as a portable store, it’s saved us many many miles of running back and forth for items.

Tomorrow’s crew will be starting at Castlemaine Depot tomorrow from 7.30am, out on site shortly after.

Hot, that’s about the only possible word to describe today.

The day began by capturing what little shade we could, driving spikes into point timbers.

Before too long we’d completed one turnout and moved onto the other.

It was quite a tedious job for some reason, however 11 point timbers have been replaced in the V/Line cross over turnout, with everything except the point lever tied up.

We ventured up to check out what Vline were up to today, it’s certainly one big hole, which they were busily filling when we arrived. This is to correct an issue with the abutment, and the lack of track is why we’re not running any trains until the 7th March. We’re very thankful Vline is taking on all responsibility for this work, as it’d be well and truly beyond our means to this.

A few pics showing off today’s other task, which was removing as much vegetation from beside the track as we could.

A comparison with other recent pics will show just how much we’ve removed.

Especially in this area, we’ll hopefully get the mower over this on Friday to tidy up all the little stuff, however it’s an enormous improvement over what it was.

Tomorrow’s crew will meet the Castlemaine Depot at 7.30am, before heading out to get a bit more done.