The last of the turnout came together very easily this morning, marking a good milestone in the project.
It looks quite at home now. There’s still plenty to do, however once it’s connected back up to the regular track early next week we’ll be able to ballast, tamp and fit up the necessary bits and bobs (we didn’t fit the point lever yet… so you’ll have to check back next week to see how we go there).
One of main issues with lifting the rail height a bit was that the gates were never going to clear the rail, so instead of waiting for that to be dealt with at 5pm one afternoon when we just wanted to lock up and go home, we’ve got ahead of the fame and lifted the gates, temporary made to full depth with some concrete sleepers.
We’ve still got plenty to do next week, the crossing needs to be excavated and relaid to the new alignment, we need to get the headshunt, or at least part of it, functional and we’ve got a mountain of cleaning up to do!
Talking of cleaning up, we’ve had Bill out sitting on the ride on mower around Castlemaine tackling what he can, it looks a million dollars and makes a massive difference.
Today began with coffee drinking and pointing… weighing up the pros and cons of moving the point lever over to the south side of the new turnout (rather than the previous north side), an executive decision has been made in this regard and hopefully we’ll be able to treat you to the exciting outcome shortly! (We hope your as excited about these trivial matters as us…)
Job one was a final check, before cutting in a closure for the straight leg.
Once we had one continuous length, it was a string line and eye to get that dead straight, which seemed to happen quite easily.
Before too long we’d fastened up the up side straight leg and we were ready to begin the down side leg.
In fastening up, we used what we had available, it’s a mix of plain spiking, pandrol plates and flat no-shoulder plates, which will annoy the future maintainers, however without spending a fortune on bits, it’s a big improvement over what we had before!
Once the straights were both firmly secured, it was onto the curved lead. As we’ve used up all the complete turnouts we’ve removed as units, this one is a bitza, made from odd lengths of rail, hence why every leg required a closure to be cut to suit, however it’s very little additional work really as it’s all still assembled as per the standard drawing – just with a few joints in different locations to suit the rails we had.
A considerable amount of time was spent ‘tweaking’ the curve with jacks and blocks of wood to make it smooth – the drawing provides offsets for getting this right, however it just wasn’t quite good enough on those alone – they rearly are apart from when using new material, so a few mm’s here and there quickly brought it into a very smooth and appealing curve.
We’re very proud of the end result. We’re yet to complete the fastening down of the curved lead and the inner curve. However, we should comfortably accomplish this tomorrow.
In something completely unrelated, one aspect of our railway is often overlooked is the platform adornments.
Currently Maldon station is showcasing some rather spectacular roses which are worthy of a mention, as are the volunteers who keep them in good health. It’s these things that really do make a big difference, we’ve got quite an area around Maldon that would lend itself to a few green thumbs, please let us know if you’re interested in getting involved.
Tomorrow’s crew will be meeting at Maldon from 8am.
Today began with a ditch, some drainage was installed and it was backfilled with Ballast, this should help lessen the water soaking issue this area has experienced.
Lots of time was spent setting it out, checking and double checking, before laying out point timbers.
They looked pretty smart once everything was lined up!
A keen eye will note that given we need to install another turnout immediately off the end of this one, we don’t seem to have made provision for long enough timbers… the short timbers you see in the pic above will be replaced (at least 6 of them anyhow) to support the next turnout – but at this stage for setting up, it’s much easier to lay it out as per drawing and swap them over later before we fasten everything up – we also still need to find a suitable arrangement for the point lever as the old arrangement wasn’t ideal.
However it’s starting to look the business!!
Tomorrow’s crew will hopefully get this largely fastened up, at least the straight legs hopefully and by the end of the week, with any luck, she’ll be done!
Monday saw an action-packed destruction fest, with the 2nd turnout removed – this one came out in kit form very readily, multiple rails broke as soon as they were lifted and quite decent sections of rail foot were just ornamental – it’s need for replacement was certainly not before time.
Today’s crew undertook all the horrid jobs, namely pulling all the spikes, screw and undoing any bolts that didn’t break during the removal – not a fun job, however it’s done now – thankyou everyone.
We then spent the rest of the day correcting the levels, by adding dirty ballast and gravel to form what has already become an incredibly firm roadbed.
Unfortunately, the ground immediately in front of the digger in the pic above has told its secrets regarding why we had so much settlement. About 50mm below surface level is pure plastic waterlogged clay, thankfully railways spread the load well over most surfaces and hopefully with much less water coming off the shed the issue will resolve in due course, however it’ll take a long time to dry out, so we’ll likely be here correcting minor dips for some time into the future.
It’s come up looking quite smart however, tomorrow will see us place a bit of cross drainage in and hopefully we’ll get the turnout laid out, or at least the beginnings of.
VGR Civil Blog 